Tag: 2012 presidential election

Right off the bat, Romney hits us with some unscripted juice. “My, oh my, you guys are great to be out here with this rain,” he says. He has declined the use of an umbrella and is getting rained on with the rest of us. He grins, jaw like a crescent moon. “This guy here with the orange shirt—boy, that thing is turning a diff…a deeper color of orange here this morning.” The man’s shirt is turning a deeper color of orange due to moisture saturation, is the phenomenon that Mitt Romney is pointing out. Is there an emotional clue here? Not to his essential self, perhaps, but the remark does suggest a man who does not often behold damp textiles, who perhaps comes from a land where the laws of materiality and hydrology are different from our own.

Wells Tower: Does Mitt Romney Have a Soul? – GQ

I cannot begin to express how much I loved this piece.

August 26, 2012

2012 presidential election, mitt romney, politics
“What the Hell is a Simpson Bowl?”

Andrew Sullivan, whose writing I generally adore, is, I think, really wrong on an important aspect of horse-race analysis for the presidential election. His prescription for Obama at the Democratic Convention:

… if I were to offer a single piece of advice to the campaign, it would be to use the convention to declare that he would sign Bowles-Simpson as written if it came to his desk. He’d instantly own the fiscal center, isolate the GOP’s extremism, and reaffirm his credibility on the deficit.

The paradigm can still be shifted.

… What matters is that Obama should declare his first priority on being re-elected would be a grand bargain on the lines of Bowles-Simpson. Force Romney to say no.

This is how Obama can win the Beltway pundit class, which is absurdly and needlessly obsessed with fantasies of utopian bipartisanship and centrism. David Brooks and Tom Friedman would enter a trance state of moderate-nirvana.

But the Gang of 500 doesn’t have the votes to put Obama over the top in Ohio. (Though perhaps if they all lived in Florida in 2000, but never mind that…)

The people Obama needs to reach are not “centrists” or budget wonks. What he needs to reach is a tiny sliver of the electorate, weirdly termed “independents,” which is distinguished mainly for being generally too ignorant about politics and policy (not necessarily through any fault of their own) to have made up their mind until the last minute.

Imagine you’re an underemployed blue collar worker in the Rust Belt, or a confused octogenarian retiree in Florida. If you see on your Yahoo News page, or hear on your 6 o’clock news that Obama has embraced something called “Simpson-Bowles,” the first thing you’ll wonder is whether those bowls feature Homer or Bart.

Okay, that’s not fair. But you get the point. The pundit class has this idea soaked into its collective conscience that those who decide elections are fixated on who has a better plan for the budget. Yes, these undecided voters do care about the state of their entitlement programs, about the security of our financial system, about their rate of taxation. But things like “the deficit” and “the budget” are abstract concepts that, if they stir emotions, do so because they’ve been stirred by ideological screamers whose audiences have already decided who they’re voting for, regardless of any understanding of why they’re angry.

Of course, the message can sink in that Obama is the guy who now says he’s going to take a serious approach to balancing the country’s checkbook. But Romney will say the same thing. No one on the sidelines is saying, “Well, clearly Simpson-Bowles is the superior plan, being centrist and all.” It’ll be a wash on the specifics, and, as usual, it will really come down to which guy the undecideds like more.

And that’s another reason why, ladies and gentlemen, Obama continues to, more or less, have it in the bag.

August 24, 2012

2012 presidential election, Andrew sullivan, politics
Twisted Sister joined a list of other artists telling Romney/Ryan to stop using their music, but this is especially interesting to me, because how do Romney and Ryan not realize that they are, in fact, the “it” we’re no longer gonna take?

Jed Groettum

August 23, 2012

2012 presidential election, jed groettum, politics
You are Stuck with Joe Biden

So there is this small flurry of rumors fluttering about the murkier reaches of the Beltway media saying that President Obama has been courting Hillary Clinton to join him on the 2012 ticket in place of Joe Biden, and these rumors of course have nothing to do with the fact that Romney is not only touching politics’ third rail with his choice of Paul Ryan, but that he has gotten down on all fours and licked the third rail until it’s slippery.

I don’t even want to link to any of the stories because they don’t deserve page views. If you want to see them, go use the google.

Let me explain as clearly as I can why you should not believe these rumors, and that they are, in fact, an enormous, steaming pile of crap. And you don’t even have to get into the weeds of the Obama-Clinton soap operas that the press loves to doodle about in their notebooks, or think about who likes who or who wants who to run for president one day or anything. All you need to know are these two things.

1. Joe Biden is actually a huge asset to the president. Not only is he widely reported to be a close and valued counselor to the president, trusted with a sizable and extremely consequential governing portfolio, but he is also a key ambassador to white, middle-class voters in key swing states. Where Obama’s coolness or eloquence fail to connect, Biden’s down-to-Earth familiarity and jocularity ease doubts and forge bonds.

2. Obama gains nothing electorally from having Clinton instead of Biden on his ticket that he doesn’t already have locked up. Obama is trouncing Romney with women voters, and the notion that Hillary Clinton can help with rural voters in places like West Virginia is a load of nonsense, a relic of the Democratic primaries, where, when the electorate was entirely made up of people who were already Democrats, Clinton fared far better than Obama. She in no way would sway rural voters already inclined toward Romney in the other direction. I mean, just think about what a silly idea that is, that Hillary Clinton is somehow the key to winning over coal miners or something.

The Obama team would probably rather Joe Biden were a little more careful with his words sometimes, sure, but no one’s votes (or as Biden himself might say, “LITERALLY no one’s votes”) are being swayed by Biden saying something a little goofy now and then. They know that.

If nothing else, Obama suddenly replacing his vice-president on the ticket would be, perhaps, the ultimate sign of weakness and desperation. In this election, as I have spelled out, Obama is neither weak nor desperate. It is Romney who, in the midst of an election he at one point believed he could win by default, has decided to attempt the Hail Mary of choosing a running mate who exemplifies everything the Obama team already wants you to think about him: That he is going to heartlessly slash programs for the elderly and poor, while cutting the taxes of bazillionaires.

The right knows that it’s Romney who’s desperate, and they’d rather you thought the opposite was true. It’s kind of what they do. Don’t buy it.

August 17, 2012

2012 presidential election, joe biden, politics
It’s More or Less in the Bag

I worry a lot. Bad things really do happen. Unexpected things. It’s smart, I think, to never be too comfortable that you fail to prepare for contingencies.

But it looks like some folks are finally beginning to admit one thing: Obama is almost certainly going to get reelected. Ignore the tight race of the national polls, because it’s all about the Electoral College.

Michael Tomasky at Daily Beast lays it out, first adding up the probable outcomes for the East and Midwest, and then moving toward the Left Coast:

Let’s look at these West Coast states. Even though [late on Election Night] they’re still voting in California, obviously Obama is going to win it (55 [electoral votes]). And equally obviously, he’s going to win Washington (12) and Oregon (7), where neither side even bothered to spend a dime. Throw in Hawaii (4). Those 78 votes haul Obama up to 260. That’s something to keep in mind for election night: Whatever Obama’s number is at 10 pm Eastern, add those 78 EV’s—they’re a mortal lock, and a hefty insurance policy. If he wins Nevada (6) and Colorado (9), it’s over.

In other words, Obama can lose the big Eastern four—Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida: all of ’em!—and still be reelected.

Seriously, that’s it. I’ve been saying this for some time now, in fact, referencing Ron Brownstein’s 2009 thesis about the “Blue Wall” of states that will be safe for Obama, barring some cataclysm. In September 2010, when Rick Perry looked like a very strong contender (oops), and he and Romney were showing strength in national polls, I wrote:

If, for example, Perry’s national numbers are strong against Obama, that could be because he’s running enormous margins in states that he’d win anyway like Texas. Obama doesn’t need to win the electoral-vote-rich states like Ohio by big margins. He just needs to win them by a single vote to take their electoral votes. So let’s wait and see whether Perry and Romney are faring this well because they’re genuinely popular across the spectrum, or whether they’re just being bolstered by those states that already loathe their illegitimate, communist, Muslim, Kenyan-born president.

As with these older numbers, the current back and forth in the national polls is what keeps this looking tight. And sure, Obama could very well lose the popular vote and still pull off a victory in the Electoral College (which, while being nice for sparing us a Romney presidency, would only enrage me further at this absurd system). Folks, Obama won 365 electoral votes last time. 95 more than he needed to be elected. You think he can’t scrape that together this time around? Really?

Like I said, I know that bad things can happen. Terrorist attacks, financial crises, scandals, these could all upend everything. But given how things are and are likely to be, this is in the bag for the president. As long as he doesn’t blow it in the campaign. Which, I’d say, is the most likely doomsday scenario of all.

And that’s not very likely, is it?

August 5, 2012

2012 presidential election, obama, politics
I Want Revenge

I don’t know if Mitt Romney’s cruelty toward those he perceived as weak in high school is relevant to how he would handle the presidency.

But I know this: I was bullied mercilessly in school. Middle school alone was so traumatic, so totally full of verbal abuse, shunning, mockery, and occasional beatings, that I nearly didn’t make it, and it’s damaged me badly to this day. High school allowed me to find some safe niches, but the cruelty persisted nonetheless. When I was the victim of an outright assault in DC in 2010, it was itself a form of bullying: heartless people taking their aggression out on a vulnerable person.

So if voters do hold this against Romney, if he does lose support because of something he did almost 50 years ago, I say: Good. The people who bully almost never see it as significant, and that’s just the problem. They see it as their right as a “superior” person to call out and harm their inferiors. To them, it’s just funny, at best.

It probably won’t happen, but I admit it, regardless of its actual, current-day relevance, I hope Romney loses many, many votes over this. Someone in my position never gets revenge, so I’ll take whatever pittance I can get.

May 10, 2012

2012 presidential election, bullying, mitt romney, personal, politics
Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns Explanation, as Performed by Kermit the Frog

It’s obviously very important to Mitt Romney that people understand with absolute clarity what his position is on the release of his tax returns. To help him out, I’ve enlisted Kermit the Frog to reiterate Mr. Romney’s explanation from last night’s debate.

January 17, 2012

2012 presidential election, kermit the frog, mitt romney, politics, puppet
Ron Paul, Stopped Clock

If you’re in the spheres of my online social networks, you may have noticed that I’ve had a certain fixation on the more insane or upsetting aspects of the Ron Paul candidacy. Call it schadenfreude if you like, or malicious cherry-picking, but I’ve felt compelled to highlight things about Paul that show his more hard-right or bizarrely conspiratorial musings. (I’ve had some thoughts about him on this blog as well.)

I’ve only now realized why this is so. It’s not the same motivation I have for, say, mocking Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann — they’re more pure comedy. Well, not pure, because there’s a hefty dose of revulsion in there. But you get my point. It’s motivated instead by what I perceive to be liberals’ sympathy for Ron Paul. He seems to keep being blessed by folks all over the progressive spectrum as “the Republican who we trust.”

Why is this? Ron Paul is by no means a sympathetic character for liberals: he’s by most accounts a rock-solid, hard-line cultural conservative. Though he may not always want the federal government to legislate on behalf of cultural conservatism, he seems to have no qualms about states doing so. He’s fully committed to opposition to the cornerstone of contemporary liberalism: the welfare state. Liberals as we know them today are descended directly from the policies of the New Deal, the basis of which was government aggressively imposing itself on the economy in order to triage a collapsed economy. But any government-based program that in any way lends support to those who need a small assist is anathema to Paul’s ideology.

What liberals really seem to like about Ron Paul are his support for ending the drug war and, most importantly, his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last election cycle, when the Iraq War was among the most salient of all issues, Paul stood out among the GOP field for opposing the party line. Democrats and liberals, frantic with their opposition to the war and to the president that birthed it, deified Paul as the sensible Republican almost solely because of his position on one particular war.

But liberals, I think, would be hard-pressed to take Paul’s larger foreign policy vision seriously, a vision that involves loopy scare theories about the UN taking over the country and other such nonsense. And none of this even takes into account those horrible newsletters, which I think should make the entire mainstream political world shudder. Whether Paul penned those screeds himself is almost immaterial, as he allowed his name to be attached to, and then profit from, their vileness.

In other words, liberals need to stop thinking of Ron Paul as the adorable old uncle who, while he holds some antiquated views, has the right idea at heart. No, sorry. With opposition to the Iraq invasion and his opposition to our absurd drug laws, Ron Paul is almost the definition of the proverbial stopped clock; he’s been right essentially twice. Ever. But his support for Christianist social conservatism, his belief that the government should leave its people to suffer merely on a haughty principle, and his batty ideas about supervillain conspiracies trump all of that.

So stop admiring him. If nothing else, liberals should be heartily relieved that Paul has no chance of becoming president.

December 31, 2011

2012 presidential election, politics, ron paul
The Fashionably Late Don’t Get to Be President

I don’t think anyone could have foreseen Rick Perry’s dizzying drop in support during the past few weeks. I, for one, definitely feared him as some kind of unstoppable teabagger-infused jugger-nut who might very well fool the American electorate into making him president by virtue of his swagger and love for Jesus. It’s happened before.

And I still seem to be alone in thinking that his goofy New Hampshire speech was not quite the camel-back-fracturing straw for his candidacy. It almost doesn’t matter; he’s performed so poorly — so unexpectedly poorly — in all other areas save fundraising, that if he had giddily groped female staff members in front of the crowd, it still might not have made much of a difference. Probably would have helped.

Of course, it could all turn around. Indeed, the Iowa caucuses are not far away, and I’d say it’s crucial he finish in the top two in order to remain relevant, as he’s almost certain to fare badly in New Hampshire. But Cain is having, well, a rough time of it this week, and Newt Gingrich then becomes the next guy in line to gather up winger support, and I think even they find him unbearable. (Hell, if they want someone who can speak in complete sentences, they have Romney!)

But let’s presume for the sake of this post that Perry really is toast, that this whole presidential adventure has been a humiliating farce in an otherwise astoundingly successful political career. What’s at the core of this? Why couldn’t he pull off another big victory?

I think his string of successes are important to keep in mind here. He’s obviouslycapable of waging fierce, laser-focused, and sometimes even scrappy campaigns, and he has always prevailed — always! And with this cycle’s risible field of competitors, there was no reason a seasoned, tough pol like Perry could not have mowed them all down if he’d really wanted to.

And I think that was the problem. I think Perry is blowing it because he doesn’t really want it. Not really. I don’t mean that in the Herman Cain “oh shit I might be president that wasn’t supposed to happen” kind of way, I mean that Perry probably ran for president because it looked like he could win, not because he really wanted the job. He clearly has no Grand Vision for the country, he has no philosophical core that is fueling his charge. He probably saw that he could win if he ran a half-decent campaign, and boy, wouldn’t it be nice to president?

My only evidence beyond his wretched performance for his ambivalence is the one thing I think should have tipped off everyone who covers this subject: his late entrance.

Look at Mitt Romney: he’s been running for president since at least 2005. He’s spent every iota of his being for years and years on his quest to become the commander in chief. This guy wants it bad, and it shows in his almost pitch-perfect campaign this cycle.

Go back a season, and look at John McCain: he’d been running for president since 1999, and it wasnt until 2008 that he overcome amazing odds to eke out the GOP nomination. This guy probably contorted himself more violently than Romney could ever hope to in order to appeal to the necessary constituencies to pass GOP primary voters’ muster, and the depths of slime to which he stooped in the general election were shocking. This man wanted it bad.

And now look at folks like Wesley Clark and Fred Thompson, two guys who got in late to much fanfare, but ultimately waged pathetic campaigns (and I say this as a Clark ’04 supporter), and then compare them with folks like MikeHuckabee, Chris Christie, and Mitch Daniels, three ostensibly qualified contenders who clearly just didn’t want it badly enough. Not nearly as much as Mitt or McCain, anyway.

A late entrance into a presidential campaign tells me — at least now it does — that a candidate doesn’t have the maniacal political rapaciousness that is required to ascend to the Oval Office. If he or she did, they would have been bending all their efforts (like Romney, McCain, Obama, and Hillary Clinton) to that end the second it was possible. But Perry didn’t. He sauntered in late to the party, loudly interrupted the conversations already going on, and managed to spill punch on the floor while doing a bad impression of the host.

For some reason, I’m guessing, Perry probably thought he was going to have a cakewalk to the White House, so his lack of drive wouldn’t matter. But that’s never how it works. Obama and Hillary Clinton both wanted to be president so badly you could see the madness in their eyes (and some wear their mania better than others). That goes for McCain, too. John Edwards was nuts, sure, but he didn’t have that drive, or else he would have handled his affairs differently. Mike Huckabee didn’t have that drive either, or he would have put a more earnest effort into fundraising in his ’08 run.

There are only two exceptions I can think of as far as eventually-elected presidents who may not have lusted after the office all that much: Dwight Eisenhower (who got to be president because that’s just what happens when you win World War II) and George W. Bush (who simply felt he deserved to be president — which is different — and had the name of someone who had already been president).

It’s not clear to me that Obama wants to hold on to the presidency as much as Romney wants to take it from him, and I think that’s really, really going to matter one year from now. As for the rest of them? Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul would all like to be president, but know they won’t be. Huntsman, and Pawlenty before him, thinks he ought to be president, but can’t be. Cain never intended to become a factor in the race at all, and soon probably won’t be. Bachmann thinks she already is president, but never will be.

Perry thought someone would hand him the presidency, and now that he can see that they won’t, I’m guessing that this game isn’t fun anymore.

November 9, 2011

2012 presidential election, politics
The Fashionably Late Don’t Get to Be President

”Hey, ev’rybody! What’d I miss?”

**

I don’t think anyone could have foreseen Rick Perry’s dizzying drop in support during the past few weeks. I, for one, definitely feared him as some kind of unstoppable teabagger-infused jugger-nut who might very well fool the American electorate into making him president by virtue of his swagger and love for Jesus. It’s happened before.

And I still seem to be alone in thinking that his goofy New Hampshire speech was not quite the camel-back-fracturing straw for his candidacy. It almost doesn’t matter; he’s performed so poorly — so unexpectedly poorly — in all other areas save fundraising, that if he had giddily groped female staff members in front of the crowd, it still might not have made much of a difference. Probably would have helped.

Of course, it could all turn around. Indeed, the Iowa caucuses are not far away, and I’d say it’s crucial he finish in the top two in order to remain relevant, as he’s almost certain to fare badly in New Hampshire. But Cain is having, well, a rough time of it this week, and Newt Gingrich then becomes the next guy in line to gather up winger support, and I think even they find him unbearable. (Hell, if they want someone who can speak in complete sentences, they have Romney!)

But let’s presume for the sake of this post that Perry really is toast, that this whole presidential adventure has been a humiliating farce in an otherwise astoundingly successful political career. What’s at the core of this? Why couldn’t he pull off another big victory?

I think his string of successes are important to keep in mind here. He’s obviously capable of waging fierce, laser-focused, and sometimes even scrappy campaigns, and he has always prevailed — always! And with this cycle’s risible field of competitors, there was no reason a seasoned, tough pol like Perry could not have mowed them all down if he’d really wanted to.

And I think that was the problem. I think Perry is blowing it because he doesn’t really want it. Not really. I don’t mean that in the Herman Cain “oh shit I might be president that wasn’t supposed to happen” kind of way, I mean that Perry probably ran for president because it looked like he could win, not because he really wanted the job. He clearly has no Grand Vision for the country, he has no philosophical core that is fueling his charge. He probably saw that he could win if he ran a half-decent campaign, and boy, wouldn’t it be nice to president?

My only evidence beyond his wretched performance for his ambivalence is the one thing I think should have tipped off everyone who covers this subject: his late entrance.

Look at Mitt Romney: he’s been running for president since at least 2005. He’s spent every iota of his being for years and years on his quest to become the commander in chief. This guy wants it bad, and it shows in his almost pitch-perfect campaign this cycle.

Go back a season, and look at John McCain: he’d been running for president since 1999, and it wasnt until 2008 that he overcome amazing odds to eke out the GOP nomination. This guy probably contorted himself more violently than Romney could ever hope to in order to appeal to the necessary constituencies to pass GOP primary voters’ muster, and the depths of slime to which he stooped in the general election were shocking. This man wanted it bad.

And now look at folks like Wesley Clark and Fred Thompson, two guys who got in late to much fanfare, but ultimately waged pathetic campaigns (and I say this as a Clark ‘04 supporter), and then compare them with folks like Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and Mitch Daniels, three ostensibly qualified contenders who clearly just didn’t want it badly enough. Not nearly as much as Mitt or McCain, anyway.

A late entrance into a presidential campaign tells me — at least now it does — that a candidate doesn’t have the maniacal political rapaciousness that is required to ascend to the Oval Office. If he or she did, they would have been bending all their efforts (like Romney, McCain, Obama, and Hillary Clinton) to that end the second it was possible. But Perry didn’t. He sauntered in late to the party, loudly interrupted the conversations already going on, and managed to spill punch on the floor while doing a bad impression of the host.

For some reason, I’m guessing, Perry probably thought he was going to have a cakewalk to the White House, so his lack of drive wouldn’t matter. But that’s never how it works. Obama and Hillary Clinton both wanted to be president so badly you could see the madness in their eyes (and some wear their mania better than others). That goes for McCain, too. John Edwards was nuts, sure, but he didn’t have that drive, or else he would have handled his affairs differently. Mike Huckabee didn’t have that drive either, or he would have put a more earnest effort into fundraising in his ‘08 run.

There are only two exceptions I can think of as far as eventually-elected presidents who may not have lusted after the office all that much: Dwight Eisenhower (who got to be president because that’s just what happens when you win World War II) and George W. Bush (who simply felt he deserved to be president — which is different — and had the name of someone who had already been president).

It’s not clear to me that Obama wants to hold on to the presidency as much as Romney wants to take it from him, and I think that’s really, really going to matter one year from now. As for the rest of them? Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul would all like to be president, but know they won’t be. Huntsman, and Pawlenty before him, thinks he ought to be president, but can’t be. Cain never intended to become a factor in the race at all, and soon probably won’t be. Bachmann thinks she already is president, but never will be.

Perry thought someone would hand him the presidency, and now that he can see that they won’t, I’m guessing that this game isn’t fun anymore.

November 8, 2011

2004 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, politics, rick perry
Don’t Bother Facepalming for Jon Huntsman

So, it turns out Jon Huntsman doesn’t actually speak “fluent” Mandarin. He can apparently garble his way through, which is way more than I will ever be able to do in any language other than English, but this notion pushed by his campaign and by the lazy media that he has mastered the Chinese tongue is apparently hogwash. Upon reading this absurd pseudo-scandal-in-the-making, I was tempted to engage in a full-on facepalm.

But then I considered the subject. As Huntsman was making noises about entering the race for the White House, there were a few things we all took for granted.

Assumption 1: Huntsman will be a credible threat to Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination.

This has been exploded, of course, as in every poll save a few late New Hampshire surveys, Huntsman has struggled to eke out 1%. He made it all the way to 10% in New Hampshire, but given that Romney is polling at about a billion percent, and that Huntsman is still scraping his way to Ron Paul territory even in this state, we can safely say that not only will Huntsman not win New Hampshire and not win the nomination, but that he will have largely been forgotten when the history of this period is written.

Assumption 2: Huntsman is a super-charasmatic figure who looks and sounds the part of president.

Seen any debates lately? If his performances during these bizarre events have had any lasting impression, it has been for his unbearably bad attempts at humor and levity. His jokes have not only bombed, but made folks uncomfortable. His pop culture references have confused his target audience (for example, making a vague Nirvana reference in an early debate before the Tea Party). And his announcement speech, so intensely anticipated by the mainstream media? Let’s just say he gave Pawlenty a run for his money as most boring Republican. Huntsman has come off looking the part of president only if we’re talking about president of the AV club.

Assumption 3. Republicans will initially reject Huntsman for having been a member of Barack Obama’s administration.

We never got to test this theory out. See Assumptions 1 and 2. In other words, he’s performed so abysmally that there’s yet been no reason to reject him on anything more substantial.

And so Huntsman has now dashed what would be Assumption 4, that he has in fact been honest about his ability to speak Mandarin. But look at the first three. There is no reason to be surprised that part of Huntsman’s reason for being seen as a credible candidate (at one point) has fallen apart, because they all have.

And I will admit that it’s a shame. I’ve “endorsed” Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination because as much as I loathe him, I know that he’d be the least dangerous of the “viable” Republican options (meaning Perry and Cain as of now). Huntsman would not only have been an even better choice from my perspective (thanks to his embrace of reality in some key areas), but there was once something in me that thought that even as a Republican, he might not make such a bad president, even compared to Obama.

I no longer think this. And I suspect that pretty much nothing else that goes wrong with his spectacularly terrible campaign will surprise me.

Save your facepalms, put the breaks on that headdesk. If you must act out, simply shake your head, gently, as it hangs at an ever-so-slight angle.

November 1, 2011

2012 presidential election, fail, jon huntsman, politics
Why, Oh Why Must I Have Mitt Romney’s Back?

”I’m delightful now!”

I still hate Mitt Romney, but it continues to get under my skin when he gets knocked for presentational hangups he had four years ago, but has now largely gotten over. As much as I adore Rachel Maddow, for example, her hammering of Romney night after night for his rich-guy persona is beginning to border on the kind of mockery one gets from snooty girls in high school. Not that I know anything about that.

As I’ve stated before, Romney is a thousand times the candidate he was last time around, and as a student of politics, I’m amazed and fascinated by it. And yes, as a victim of bullying and stereotyping, I’m really bothered when Romney is attacked over and over again for stupid crap like a goofy picture of himself from a million years ago. I guess I feel for him. Lord knows he doesn’t need my sympathy, the rich Republican bastard, but there it is.

The New York Times today does a service by acknowledging and explaining Romney’s astounding improvement as a campaigner, which, in essence, boils down to what has likewise made Al Gore, for example, a much more appealing media figure: he’s started to just be himself.

But even here, I feel like Romney doesn’t get a fair shake. Witness this take on his sense of humor:

… the awkward jokes are not completely missing. At a stop in Milford, N.H., recently, Ms. Romney said she was eager to show voters “the other side of Mitt.”

He suddenly turned around to show his backside, prompting laughter from the crowd and from his wife, “Oh, dear.”

Awkward? Are you kidding me? That shit’s gold. And it takes balls to make a goofball, totally unexpected joke like that, particularly when you’re running for president and you’re Mitt-frickin’-Romney.

Oh, jeebus, listen to me. I need to take a shower.

October 25, 2011

2012 presidential election, mitt romney, politics
I Hate Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney for President!
I don’t think those of us in the reality-based community are sufficiently panicked about the prospect of a Rick Perry presidency. First, it’s foolish to think that Barack Obama has this election in the bag no matter who the GOP nominates. Second, Rick Perry is running away with this primary right now, besting Romney by double digits in most national and state polls. Third and most importantly, he’s just the right combination of dumb, ruthless, and insane to be formidable, electable, and unthinkably dangerous. Dangerous in foreign policy, dangerous in his rejection of science (or better-put, “knowledge”), dangerous in how he is likely to treat the poor and uninsured, dangerous in his brazen theocratic leanings. Dangerous, really, because he could win and start getting his way.

In most conventional races, one hopes that the opposing party nominates their craziest partisan so that our guy or gal can crush them in the center-focused general election. Perhaps in most cycles, Perry would be among that group of candidates. I’d be a little giddier if I thought, say, Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich were close to scoring the top of the GOP ticket. For the Republicans to nominate a less rabid conservative would make Obama’s chances all the narrower. But Perry has emerged in a unique time, a time in which a charming, folksy nut bag can take advantage of the desperation, ignorance, and fear of even the political center and win the White House.

Now, there is no acceptable GOP candidate (save perhaps Jon Huntsman, who I think could make a plausible run for the Democratic nomination as a kind of moderate, blue dog type). All of them would be disastrous for the country, disaster for the principles held dear by liberals, disaster for the poor and working classes, disaster for the separation of church and state, disaster for national security and foreign policy.

But there are degrees. No one would doubt, for example, in 2000, that even though George W. Bush turned out to be a disaster of unpredictable proportions, that, say, a Gary Bauer or Alan Keyes presidency would have been triply or quadruply worse. There are degrees.

This is why progressives and Democrats (not the same thing) should defy convention. Stop rooting for a Bachmann or Palin nomination, because neither will happen. Likewise, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain are all destined to at some point lose this nomination race. There are only two possibilities: Perry and Mitt Romney. Rooting for Perry is total folly. He could be elected, perhaps rather easily, and would be perhaps the most damaging of any of the aforementioned candidates (save perhaps Bachmann, but she lacks any political skill for actual governing, which I will get to). Given the very real — even likely — possibility of a Republican in the White House in 2013, there is really only one thing left to say.

Mitt Romney for president!

Not really ”for president” of course. But liberals should wish with all their hearts, and do whatever they can, to see that Romney wins the GOP nomination. Do opposition research for him on Perry, lift up other right-wing candidates to steal his thunder, speak well of Romney — in conservative terms of course, whenever possible. (Example: “It sure seems like Romney has a better plan for lowering taxes than Perry.”) If you can spare it, donate to Romney’s campaign, and specify it for the primary season.

I know this sounds crazy, but it’s crucial. Less than keeping Obama in office, progressives should really focus their efforts on making sure Rick Perry never becomes president. Ever. That means taking the chance that Romney might be instead.

You know I loathe Mitt Romney. To make a casefor him pains me more than I can tell you. But many of those reasons for which he earns my disgust are the very reasons why he would be preferable to Perry. Consider:
- He is far smarter than Perry, and far less jingoistic. While he has made no bones about publicly detesting Obama’s insufficient slobbering love for American super-awesomeness, he is at least a shrewd and subtle thinker who is less prone to blunder the country into some military disaster because of some knee-jerk macho overreaction.
- Most importantly: Mitt Romney has no principles. He is of and entwined with the rich establishment, but he is primarily concerned with self-elevation. His flip-floppiness, his willingness to say and do anything to earn political favor make him a far better Republican to have in charge than the Idiot King, Rick “Treat-Him-Pretty-Ugly” Perry.
Think about it. Though we are, for now, taking an unfortunate and dangerous lurch to the right in American politics, it can not be permanent. If 2006 and 2008 taught us anything, it’s that Republican policies and behavior allowed to run rampant eventually make their flaws transparent. The country will lurch back toward the center.

With Perry in the Oval Office, he will, even more so than George W. Bush, stand firm in his wrongheadedness, and remain steadfast in fighting for his far-right laundry list of tragic priorities.

But Romney will feel those political winds, and bend with them. To every breeze and gust of moderation and progressivism, Romney will open himself up like a sail and drift, drift. Romney is eminently pliable, and that is our best hope. As his only concern will be his own preservation, a President Romney would adjust his course as the political currents take the country in directions he would normally find uncomfortable — but not unfamiliar. Romney the Senate candidate backed abortion rights. Romney the governor passed universal health care. All because his constituency, the source of his political winds in Massachusetts, was center-left.

Perry is a terrifying threat to the health of our democracy, to the integrity of everything America has achieved since Roosevelt. Both of them, even! Romney would be a huge disappointment, and do his own level of damage to the country. But the impact crater of his presidency’s collision with the electorate would be far smaller than if we ran headlong into a Perry presidency.

So I say without reservation: Until August 27, 2012 at the opening of the Republican National Convention, Romney for president!
September 16, 2011

2012 presidential election, mitt romney, politics, rick perry
What Obama’s Bad National Numbers Definitely Don’t Tell Us

A “Blue Wall.”

A new poll today has some grim numbers for the president. Though it shows him besting Perry and Romney in head-to-head match-ups, it’s well within the margin of error, and his numbers for job approval, whether the country is on the right track, and in a head-to-head against a generic Republican are rather discouraging.

That said, his general election percentages are causing a bit of exaggerated analysis. At NBC news, for example, Mark Murray is quoted as saying that Obama is “no longer the favorite” to win in 2012. Keep in mind, this is a national poll, which is essence a snapshot of the feelings of the entire general electorate; in other words, the popular vote. Guess what has nothing to do with who is elected president? That’s right.

The data that would actually tell us Obama’s current reelection prospects would be state-by-state match-ups within the traditional swing states, as well as within red states that Obama turned (temporarily?) blue in 2008. Remember, Bush “won” (or was installed) in 2000 even though he lost the popular vote by half a million votes. In 2004, if a few more liberals had turned out in Ohio, John Kerry would have won the presidency with a popular vote deficit of about 3 million votes. It are the electoral votes that matter, as unfortunate and aberrant as that is.

Now think about what states, then, Obama would need to carry. The latest census changes somewhat the number of electoral votes each state has, and the new numbers favor the Republicans, but on the whole the math isn’t terribly different. To win, Obama will of course need to carry the traditional blue states — there will be no room to lose anything that, say, Gore or Kerry had previously won. After that, it’s only a handful of more electoral votes that Obama would need to win the day. At an event at Brookings in 2009 that I reported on for one of my previous employers, National Journal’s Ron Brownstein called the block of safely blue states the “Blue Wall.” I wrote at the time:

… the event left no doubt in anyone’s mind that Democrats’ growing appeal to suburban and younger white working-class voters, and the dwindling of the country’s rural population, the growing numbers of minority voters and other emergent groups — what Ron Brownstein called “the coalition of the ascendant” — meant that Democrats would have a national electoral advantage for the foreseeable future.

Things are looking much tougher than expected, doubtless, as Brownstein himself has recently written:

… Obama’s approval rating exceeds his disapproval rating in states with 301 Electoral College votes — well down from his 365 total in 2008 but still enough to win. That total, however, includes North Carolina, where Obama’s approval and disapproval ratings are virtually even, and Georgia, where Republicans remain skeptical that he can seriously compete, despite signals from his reelection campaign that it intends to. If those two are removed from the list, the states in which Obama’s approval number exceeds his disapproval rating provide exactly 270 Electoral College votes, the bare majority needed to win.

So while Obama’s job ahead is tougher than most pundits (including me) had predicted, the notion that he’s in dire straits is not quite accurate. Things could certainly get worse, but it isn’t as though he’ll be facing the most appealing opposition, regardless of who gets the GOP nod. Romney, with a genuine centrist record despite his right-appeasing campaigning, still presents the clearest threat, though as I’ve noted Perry has potential appeal that may transcend his ideological distance from the electorate as a whole.

But again, that’s irrelevant right now. If, for example, Perry’s national numbers are strong against Obama, that could be because he’s running enormous margins in states that he’d win anyway like Texas. Obama doesn’t need to win the electoral-vote-rich states like Ohio by big margins. He just needs to win them by a single vote to take their electoral votes. So let’s wait and see whether Perry and Romney are faring this well because they’re genuinely popular across the spectrum, or whether they’re just being bolstered by those states that already loathe their illegitimate, communist, Muslim, Kenyan-born president.

September 6, 2011

2012 presidential election, barack obama, politics
In (Reluctant) Defense of Mitt Romney

EXCLUSIVE: Human beings enjoying the company of Mitt Romney

I have no love for Willard “Mitt” Romney. He has consistently proven that he is an unprincipled opportunist who bends with every minor political breeze. There is no shortage of statements he’s made and positions he’s held that deserve criticism and ridicule.

So my feeling is, let’s stick to criticizing those, and not go grasping at straws and doing what we liberals accuse the right of doing: taking things unfairly out of context to score political points and enjoy some schadenfreude.

The two hits against Romney I’m thinking of in particular have been around for a while now, but were recently re-aired by Rachel Maddow (whom I usually adore) a few nights back to prove a case that Romney’s camp is opting for The Full Thurston. They simply don’t hold up to be attack-worthy in my opinion.

The first is Romney’s response to hecklers a while back when he inartfully declared, “Corporations are people, my friend.” By itself, it seems risible; Look at that rich guy saying that evil corporations are the same as humans! Of course he would think that, that mean, out-of-touch richie-rich!

But here’s the entirety of his response to the hecklers:

Corporations are people, my friend. [laughter from hecklers] of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? [Hecklers shout something about “in their pockets”] Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings my friend.

I’ll be the first to tell you that this is not the way I would have phrased this, if I were on Romney’s side. It doesn’t help that he says that said money goes to “the people” rather than just “people.” But his meaning is clear, and in fact correct: Corporations are made up of human beings who are making money. I don’t like that corporation people are making so much money and doing so at the expense of the rest of the species, you know, at all, but it remains that what Romney said is true. That money goes into the “pockets” of actual humans. Just very, very, very few.

Importantly, Romney was not saying that corporations deserve special rights, nor was he saying that corporations are the equivalents of human beings. He might very well believe those things, but he didn’t make that case here. This hit on Romney is illegitimate, and we supposedly reasonable liberals and rationalists should cut it out.

Second is Romney’s “I’m also unemployed” joke from a few weeks ago. This line was trumpeted across the political media as the ultimate bonehead, unsympathetic, Scrooge-like crack of the century as though Romney was mocking the jobless before taking a big dive into his money bin.

Okay, so Romney very well may have a money bin that he swims in. I don’t know. But if you watch the video and see it — again — in the full context, this is obviously not where Romney is coming from. He is using the jobless situation in America as a central theme of his campaign — a reason why he should be elected above anyone else — and holds events and discussions around the theme, naturally.

Now, everyone knows he’s super-rich. He’s not hiding it, he’s not ashamed of it, and in the abstract, he has no reason to be (how he got rich is another matter for another post). Since everyone comes to the table (literally, in this case) with the knowledge that Romney is Governor Moneybags, and because he is establishing a conversational rapport with the people at this event, it makes perfect sense to make a little “Ha, ha, I’m also unemployed” gag to ease any tension and break some ice. Lord knows, Romney needs all the help he can get with that.

Or does he? Look at the video in full context. The first thing I think you’ll notice is that everyone there is laughing when he makes the joke, and they even join in. The feelings are genuine, and no one there is expressing even a hint of resentment. They get it: He’s rich, he’s running for president.

But also notice that after the joking, Romney takes a new, sincere tone, and expresses what appears to be a genuine concern for the psychological impact of joblessness. Is it genuine? I have no idea. But contrary to the usual rap against Romney that he’s awkward and too weird to be president, this is a strong moment of connection for him that is obviously being overshadowed by a political media with no sense of humor.

Again, from a political standpoint, I would not have made that joke. Feelings are too raw all around to make joblessness a gag on the campaign trail. But in context, it worked, and the folks on the receiving end were obviously just fine with it, and put at ease as they sit at a table with someone who might be the next president.

Nothing upsets me more in politics than the way the right lies and distorts in order to make their case. I don’t at all mind nailing a politician for being genuinely wrong or for showing exactly what it is they really think via some Kinsleyan gaffe. But the attacks on Romney in these two cases don’t hold water. There’s plenty more on which he can be called out, with derision and ferocity, but these are not even close to that. We lefties can and should do better.

August 25, 2011

2012 presidential election, mitt romney, politics