Month: September 2012

If the election were held today, Nate Silver’s model gives the president a 96.4% chance of winning. He also shows Obama trailing in South Carolina by 0.2% in his weighted poll average. It’s worth keeping your eye on. I’ve been waiting to see Georgia move into the toss-up category, but, based on admittedly sparse polling, it seems to be moving away from the president. Of all the states that Obama lost, only Montana and Missouri were closer than Georgia.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Republicans are suffering a bit of a malaise because they don’t really like their candidate. They don’t really trust him, and he isn’t really any more likable to them than he is to the rest of America. That’s why we could really see some drop-off in participation if the polls don’t tighten sufficiently to offer some hope of victory. That’s also why we’ve seen a sudden outbreak of foolishness about “unskewed” polls by Dick Morris and others. It’s critical to the hopes of downticket Republican candidates that the base doesn’t give up and stay home. This may happen on the West Coast regardless, once they see Florida, Virginia, and Ohio declared for the president. But as long as the east coast and central time Republicans believe the Rasmussen and other skewed polls are accurate, they may be able to get a decent turnout.

One thing I hope the Obama administration is thinking about is that we have senate elections in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona that are all critical. Forget what the polls say today, the president won Indiana and Nevada four years ago, he barely lost Missouri, he did admirably well in Montana, and he probably would have won Arizona if John McCain had not called it his home state. I don’t want the president to take states that are essential to his Electoral College victory for granted, but I want to see him invest a little effort campaigning in some of these states with big senate races. Even if he doesn’t win them, by holding down the margins he can improve the senate candidates’ chances of prevailing.

And he might want to schedule a stop in South Carolina.

He needs to keep working to shore everything up so he is confident of victory. But there should come a time when he can take a couple of shots at flipping an extra state or two. Widening the playing field will also send an important message. It will not only strike fear into the Republicans, but it will tell America that this election is being contested in more than just a dozen “swing-states.”

I can only think of two reasonable theories to explain why US Senator Scott Brown, Jim Barnett (campaign manager), Eric Fehrnstrom (campaign strategist), Brad Garrett (Republican Party staffer), Greg Casey & Jack Richard (Brown staffers) have chosen to question Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry:  1) there’s something in their internal polling and focus group data that suggests this is a winning issue for Brown, or 2) they’re all racist a**holes.  For the sake of argument, let’s go with Door #1.

To review:  Early this summer, the Boston political media spent weeks digging into and speculating about the Brown campaign’s claims that Warren had lied about having Native American ancestors in order to get “preferential treatment” for hiring by law schools.  After chewing all the meat off that particular bone, it turned out that the voters of the Commonwealth…didn’t much care about Warren’s ancestors or about how she got hired—at least not enough to have it affect whether they’d vote for her.  The whole story had died down and disappeared by August (coincidentally, the month when scores of Massachusetts reporters and editors go on vacation “down the Cape”).

At the candidates’ first televised debate, Brown led off with, and kept as the centerpiece of his argument why Warren should not be the next senator from Massachusetts, that “Prof. Warren claimed that she was a Native American…and clearly she’s not.”  What’s not clear is why Scott Brown thinks he has been appointed judge and jury of Elizabeth Warren’s racial heritage.  It’s even less clear why he thinks it will help him get re-elected.

But clearly he does, as does his campaign staff.  Because after the debate, Brown’s new campaign ad, “Who Knows?”, was all about…Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry.

That was followed by Brown’s aides and campaign staff doing the “Tomahawk Chop” and “Indian war whoops” at a campaign event (as well as—inexplicably to all but a somewhat bizarre subset of Boston Red Sox fans—chanting “Yankees suck!”).

Remember, we’re operating on the assumption that Brown’s people have some reason for thinking this is not a good issue, but the best available issue for the incumbent senator to campaign on.

At this point, it’s worth recalling the exact words of legendary Republican political consultant, Lee Atwater (and yes, Lee Atwater is a hero to and role model of Jim Barnett’s):  “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it.”

And in 2012, presumably, you try to make your opponent the poster child for affirmative action and “racial quotas”.

The problem for Brown is that he’s got a political reputation as a “nice guy”—the kind of “nice guy” Republican that Massachusetts Democrats can safely vote for without feeling like they’re voting for not-nice-guys like Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry or Mitch McConnell.  “Nice guys” don’t make nakedly racist attacks…especially when the person they’re attacking is a woman.

By making that attack, Brown exposed himself to this kind of counterattack:

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Warren gets to use a great tagline, “Scott Brown can continue attacking my family, but I’m going to keep fighting for yours” that’s utterly consistent with her overall campaign strategy.

She also gets to tell her parents’ story:  “But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part-Cherokee and part-Delaware, so my parents had to elope“.

Now every undecided voter in Massachusetts who ever married, or even just dated someone their parents disapproved of—because he was African-American, or she was Chinese, or Catholic, or Jewish, or Irish, or Portuguese, or from the wrong side of town, or any other damn fool reason—has a really good reason to vote for Warren and against Brown.  So does everyone in Massachusetts who has a friend or relative who’s had to deal with the kind of arrogant, intolerant and disgusting attitude (and behavior) that Brown and his campaign have put front and center for the past week.

This is still a close race.  Warren is still a political rookie running against a skilled campaigner (and “nice guy”).  But given how the demographics of Massachusetts have changed since Scott Brown was in high school, we may look back on this as the week that Brown lost the election.

Crossposted at: https:/masscommons.wordpress.com

As I have mentioned several times before, David Brooks loves his dichotomies. His approach to almost every column is to reduce a problem down to two categories and then let those two categories duke it out until the one he agrees with emerges victorious. So, for Mr. Brooks, it used to be that there were two kinds of conservatives. One was your basic rapacious capitalist who exemplified the American spirit with his risk-taking derring-do. He just wanted the government out of his hair so he could exploit workers and befoul our rivers and streams. The other kind of conservative was a Norman Rockwell family man who liked things pretty much the way they were and didn’t want any radicals upsetting the family structure or having sex out of wedlock or experimenting with new-age religion and agnosticism.

But nowhere in this picture is the kind of conservative who would rather lynch a black man than let him look at his daughter or register to vote. There are no paranoid John Birchers or Tea Partiers screeching about fluoridation or birth certificates. Lunatic preachers who blame our country’s misfortunes on gay sex and secularism are lacking. There’s no resentment about integrated schools or busing or welfare queens and their Cadillacs. No one is freaking out about all the Mexicans who have overtaken the soccer field at the local park. If Mr. Brooks’ Burkean archetype is uncomfortable with women’s liberation, he isn’t calling anyone who uses birth control a ‘slut.’

And neither does Brooks include any warmongers who insist that we fight one land war in Asia after another, regardless of the meager bang for the buck we seem to gain from them.

There’s been a realignment in this country that has been going on since long before David Brooks joined the National Review in 1984. Pretty much every intolerant asshole in the country has moved to the Republican Party, if they weren’t already there. The only exceptions are a few holier-than-thou progressives who can’t enjoy one moment of life if even one person is going hungry.

With that lone exception, all the prudes and bigots and tsk-tskers and money-grubbers and polluters and religious freaks and misogynists and fraudsters and warmongers have aligned with the conservative movement.

Yankee Republicanism is dead. All we have is the reactionary right aligned with a bunch a greedheads. You won’t find an inch of daylight between Pat Robertson and Mitt Romney or Mitt Romney and Paul Wolfowitz or Grover Norquist and Mitt Romney. We have the worst of all worlds.

The Green Bay Packers got hosed last night because the regular NFL referees are in a labor dispute with the NFL owners and are not working. Instead, a bunch of high school and small college referees are doing the pro games, and they aren’t very good. They made a couple of ludicrous calls, including one on the final play of the game that wrongfully handed victory to the Seattle Seahawks. That’s a shame. But it’s laughable that Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker asked for the real refs to return and then insisted that it wasn’t a pro-union comment. Pay the professionals, who happen to be unionized, or horrible calls will continue to happen.

Politico is getting pretty desperate. They accuse the president of running a campaign that is lacking in audacity. I get that they are riffing on the title of the president’s book, but “audacity” is not normally seen as a good thing. That’s why the book title was clever. To see that this article is stupid, all you have to do is realize that they open with a bit of advice from Napoleon and then they never manage to refute it. What exactly Napoleon said may never be known, but the gist of it was that you should never interrupt your enemy when they are in the process of a making a mistake. The point being, for Politico, that the Obama campaign isn’t making bold and risky moves because Mitt Romney seems to wake up each morning and light himself on fire. Why change the subject?

Politico actually has no answer to that question, although they do get a quote from the nation’s favorite concern troll, Ed Rendell, and another from former McCain aide Steve Schmidt, the man who gave the nation Sarah Palin. Both of those geniuses argue that playing a prevent defense is needlessly risky, despite the fact that the president’s standing in the polls has been rising steadily. It seems to me that Romney and his troops are being routed on the field of battle, and one GOP pundit after another is throwing down their weapons and fleeing for safety.

So, obviously, now would be the time for the president to shift strategies and offer up some nice targets for Romney’s artillery. What’s missing here is the recognition that Obama has already had an audacious presidency. What do you call passing health care reform in the face of massive headwinds from a horrible economic meltdown, an aroused and unified Tea Party opposition, and all the usual corporate opponents? How easy is it to re-regulate Wall Street or set up a consumer protection bureau that goes after predatory lenders and dishonest contracts? How easy is it to take on Big Oil and Big Coal and make massive investments in clean and renewable energy? How easy is it to cut the private lenders out of the college loan economy? How easy is it to end wars that aren’t going well?

It is Mitt Romney who is offering the audacious program in this election. It takes quite a bit of audacity to tell the American poor and middle class that they will have to make do with less earned benefits from Social Security and Medicare, get less help when they lose their jobs, go without health insurance, pay more in taxes, all so Romney can blow another hole in the federal budget with tax cuts for rich people and corporations. That takes “brass,” as Bill Clinton put it in a slightly different context at the Democratic National Convention. Romney doesn’t really want to talk about his plans because they are unpopular, but that’s what’s he’s using to attack Obama’s Citadel. Other weapons include a promise to harass Latinos so badly that they self-deport, the intent to appoint judges who will ban abortion, an opposition to gay marriage, support for laws that disproportionately disenfranchise blacks, and a new foreign policy where Israel makes our decisions in Middle East for us and war with Iran becomes a certainty.

If the battle is for public opinion, Romney’s policies are blunt and broken tools which have no hope of breaching the president’s fortifications. The only thing he can catapult is the propaganda. All Politico is trying to do is to lull the president out of his impregnable castle so he can be attacked with sticks and stones.

They have no advice to offer the president, and he doesn’t need any.

He’s a member of the middle class.

The Emergency Room is the best health care system in the universe (except for people like – Him).

Firing People is fun, fun, fun!

Corporations are people — except you can steal from them, raid their pension funds, fire their workers and send their jobs overseas, drive them into bankruptcy and still make a personal profit from killing them!

Lobbyists are honorable folks.

Unemployed people are Lay-Zee whiners, wanting food, decent health care, government cheese and Cadillacs when they don’t deserve them.

Paying taxes is something only stupid people do.

He’s unemployed (except when he’s not).

CEO’s know what is best for America.

Global Warming, abortion as a right, stem cell research and Health Care Reform are fairy tales he doesn’t believe in anymore.

Bullying is so not a problem. Especially bullying homos.

There ought to be a law against “servants” owning cell phones with video cameras.

Disabled people should get out of their wheelchairs, disconnect their oxygen tanks, and get a job. Take some responsibility, dammit!

War is Good!

Paying for War with Taxes is Bad!

Teachers are highly overrated.

Those barbed wire fences around Chinese factories are to keep people out.

Everything worth learning can be learned in Harvard Business School.

Vouchers will solve all our problems.

Some of his best friends are Latinos (until he fired them).

Electing him will improve the American economy overnight, and he won’t have to lift a finger to make it so.

His son should have the right to decide whether a surrogate mother has to abort a fetus, but women should not.

He’s losing because Obama is mean.

Except really he’s winning.

Paul Ryan knows what he’s talking about, and is never wrong.

He saved the Olympics! All by himself! Without any help from (cough, cough) government.

The trees in Michigan are just the right height.

He earned everything he owns without any help from Dad.

The Cayman Islands are a great place to put your money.

Releasing Tax Returns is for Democrats.

He’s not really a heartless, soulless robot – he just plays one on TV.

His wife is a political asset, unless people see her, or hear her speak, too often.

Fundraising is campaigning.

Obama single-handedly ruined the Middle East by sucking up to Islamic Terrorists.

But it can’t be fixed anyway so we might as well use it for testing our military weaponry.

The American Military is the finest in the world. American Veterans, on the other hand, are leeches and parasites.

Show horses are great tax write-offs.

More deregulation for Big Banks is a great idea!

So are more tax cuts!

And less government spending!

Except for military spending, of course.

The secret to a great marriage is giving your wife a rose everyday.

Women make great stay at home moms.

The invisible hand of the free market is like God, sort of, only more infallible.

Liberals don’t understand how great America is.

Freedom of religion is great – for Christians.

Government bureaucrats are evil; Insurance company bureaucrats, on the other hand are the only salvation for our health care crisis.

He hates Europe.

But he loves France. Good times, good times ….

Black people would love him if they only understood him better.

Latinos too.

Women do love him.

It makes no sense to him why people would ever vote for a Democrat.

Just because his Dad was born in Mexico and got to live here and become rich doesn’t mean all the other people who came here from Mexico to better their lives deserve to stay. In fact thy should start packing their bags yesterday.

He cares deeply about others. Especially if they can still contribute to his campaign.

5 Issues This Election is Not About

Neither Candidate
by BILL QUIGLEY

Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of the death penalty for federal or state crimes.

Neither candidate is interested in eliminating or reducing the 5,113 US nuclear warheads.

Neither candidate is campaigning to close Guantanamo prison.

Neither candidate has called for arresting and prosecuting high ranking people on Wall Street for the subprime mortgage catastrophe.

Neither candidate is interested in holding anyone in the Bush administration accountable for the torture committed by US personnel against prisoners in Guantanamo or in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of drones to assassinate people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia.

Neither candidate is against warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, or racial profiling in fighting “terrorism.”

Neither candidate is interested in fighting for a living wage.  In fact neither are really committed beyond lip service to raising the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour  – which, if it kept pace with inflation since the 1960s should be about $10 an hour.

Neither candidate was interested in arresting Osama bin Laden and having him tried in court.

Neither candidate will declare they refuse to bomb Iran.

Neither candidate is refusing to take huge campaign contributions from people and organizations.

Neither candidate proposes any significant specific steps to reverse global warming.

Neither candidate is talking about the over 2 million people in jails and prisons in the US.

Neither candidate proposes to create public jobs so everyone who wants to work can.

Neither candidate opposes the nuclear power industry.  In fact both support expansion.

The Perfect Fix.

No matter which candidate wins, the PermaGov wins.

Nice.

Blinky Palermo and Don King would be proud.

As ol’Unca Don so often delights in telling us:

ONLY IN AMERICA!!!

Bet on it.

AG

I don’t want to be cavalier about something that must have been quite frightening for Ann Romney. A plane she was traveling on had to make an emergency landing last week because an electrical fire was filling the cabin with smoke. I’m sure that Mitt Romney was quite emotional about it when he heard what had happened, and I don’t want to make light of either of their experiences. But, holy crap is Romney stupid if he thinks it is a good idea to have windows that open on airplanes so you can let fresh oxygen in. If he has no clue how airplane pressurization works, he ought to at least know that there is virtually no oxygen at the cruising altitude of airplanes.

What does he thinks happens to folks who summit Mt. Everest? They either bring supplemental oxygen or they have to race back down before they die. But forget about the science of the thing. I went to tell the teenage boys about what Romney said and they already knew. Facebook is plastered with jokes about what an idiot Romney is for wanting airplanes with windows that open.

Pretty much every kid in the country has already had about 10 laughs today at Romney’s expense. Someone even made a submarine with a screen door.

I mean, really. This is even stupider than G. W. Butch!!!

This is second-term Reagan /Alzheimer’s level.

This is Mitt Romney speaking.

Mitt Romney Doesn’t Get Why Airplane Windows Don’t Open
By Dan Amira

“What I wouldn’t do for a breath of fresh air.”

Mitt Romney, a 65-year-old man with two advanced degrees, has no idea why they don’t let you open airplane windows mid-flight, according to his own remarks at a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills on Saturday. Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical  malfunction.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.”

Really.

He said that.

In public.

Who is this creature!!!???

More from the same article:

To answer Romney: Airplane cabins are pressurized to allow people to, you know, breathe and stay conscious and such at high altitudes — things that are important for everyone who isn’t an advanced robot covered in a highly convincing outer layer of humanesque skin and facial features.

I’m sorry.

He’s dumber than Sarah Palin.

Unbelievable.

AG