;)
The Commentariat -- Nov. 4, 2012
This is the end of daylight savings time tonight. It’s Mitt Romney’s favorite time of year because he gets to turn the clock back. -- Joe Biden, at a campaign stop in Colorado yesterday
Presidential Race
CW: For poll-o-phobes, here are two of my least favorite political "analysts," Dan Balz & Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, reading popular polls: "... President Obama holds a narrow advantage over Mitt Romney in the crucial contest for the electoral votes needed to win the White House, even as national polls continue to show the candidates in a virtual tie for the popular vote. In Congress, despite record levels of disapproval with the institution, voters seem likely to opt for the status quo -- Democrats in charge of the Senate and Republicans in the House." This bit is interesting: "Almost half of all Americans said Obama's hurricane response would be a factor in their vote.... An earlier survey found that 79 percent rated his handling of the situation excellent or good." This, too: "For the first time in the Post-ABC poll, independent voters are evenly split between the two candidates, at 46 percent each. Until now, Romney has held an advantage ranging from three to 20 points." ...
... Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: "President Barack Obama heads toward Election Day with an apparent lead over Republican Mitt Romney among early voters in key states that could decide the election.... More than 27 million people already have voted in 34 states and the District of Columbia. No votes will be counted until Election Day but several battleground states are releasing the party affiliation of people who have voted early. So far, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio.... Republicans have the edge in Colorado, which Obama won in 2008.... Romney's campaign aides say they are doing so much better than [John] McCain did four years ago that Romney is in great shape to overtake Obama in many of the most competitive states.... About 35 percent of voters are expected to cast ballots before Tuesday, either by mail or in person."
Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "PPP's final polls of the 2012 election cycle in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin find Barack Obama favored to win both states, although by margins a good deal closer than he won them by in 2008. In Pennsylvania Obama leads 52-46, while in Wisconsin his advantage is 51-48." ...
... Then there's this from Dustin Hawkins of the despicable Breitbart News: "The final Susquehanna Polling & Research Poll [of Pennsylvania voters] shows a 47-47% tie heading into the Tuesday election. Romney is seen slightly more favorable (+4) than Obama (+1). Adding to Romney's advantage is that an overwhelming 71% place economic and fiscal issues as their top concern, and 56% believe the nation is headed on the wrong track. Romney campaigns in Pennsylvania Sunday afternoon." CW: posts like this, which mislead readers, are why -- if Obama wins -- the wingnut populace will be working overtime to cook up & distribute election-stealing stories. ...
... Jensen of PPP: "PPP's final Minnesota poll of the 2012 election cycle finds Barack Obama leading comfortably, 53-45. We've conducted four surveys of the state since Labor Day and found Obama leading by a margin in the 7-10 point range on each of them." ...
... Then there's this from Alexander Burns of Politico: "Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are separated by just 1 point in Minnesota, effectively making the race there a toss-up, according to polling taken for the conservative American Future Fund." Romney - 46%; Obama -- 45%.
Chris Rock urges white people to vote for the white president. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link to this very funny bit:
... CW: when I was canvassing for Obama in 2008 & came upon a typical redneck voter who wasn't sure it was a good idea to vote for the black guy, I used Chris Rock's tack -- only I wasn't as funny. I think it may have worked in some cases. ...
... Kyle Leighton of TPM: "Since Oct. 28, a national tracking poll by Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling has shown Obama's job approval making a net gain of 6 percentage points.... During the same period, Romney's favorability has dropped by a net 7 points."
Today's Horror Story. Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Representative Paul D. Ryan may have largely disappeared from the national spotlight down the campaign homestretch, ceding attention to Mitt Romney. But if the Republican ticket prevails, Mr. Ryan plans to come back roaring, establishing an activist vice presidency that he said would look like Dick Cheney's under President George W. Bush."
Miss Andrist, a/k/a Maureen Dowd, lets all the boys have it again this week.
Vice President Biden explains the Romney-Ryan plan for seniors. Show this to your Republican friends & relatives in the 50-plus age group:
Nicholas Kristof is worth reading because he lists some of Mitt Romney's anti-woman policies, but this is by no means a catalog. Romney is worse than Kristof lets on.
Seth Meyers interviews Mitt Romney:
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The shrinking electoral battleground has altered the nature of American self-governance. There is evidence that the current system is depressing turnout, distorting policy, weakening accountability and effectively disenfranchising the vast majority of Americans."
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "... as perhaps the best-known Mormon after the Republican presidential candidate and a major influence on evangelical Christians, [Glenn] Beck has emerged as an unlikely theological bridge between the first Mormon presidential nominee and a critical electorate."
Voter Suppression
Outlaw Rules. Andrew Cohen of the Atlantic: Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) is ignoring a court order that the state count provisional ballots which pollworkers fail to ensure are properly completed. Cohen writes, "Folks, the legal fight for Ohio's votes is already here and here to stay." (Italics original.) Andrew Welsh-Huggins of the AP has more.
... Even more detail from Joy-Ann Reid of the Grio. CW: this isn't just voter suppression. It's racist voter suppression.
... CW: as I've said before, Obama needs a big advantage in Ohio to beat the criminals who are determined to discard legal votes. According to the polls, Obama's lead is narrow, perhaps too narrow to overcome the illegal shenanigans of state officials. ...
... As Darrel Rowland of the Columbus Dispatch reports, "The final Dispatch Poll shows Obama leading 50 percent to 48 percent in the Buckeye State. However, that 2-point edge is within the survey’s margin of sampling error, plus or minus 2.2 percentage points." (The good news: "Sen. Sherrod Brown is besting GOP state Treasurer Josh Mandel by 6 points, 51percent to 45 percent.") ...
... Rosalind Helderman & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Democrats fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won to keep Ohio polls open to all voters this weekend, and they were making the most of it in this Democratic stronghold Saturday.... The Ohio secretary of state's office said Saturday that, statewide, 1.6 million people had voted by mail or in person as of Friday, a figure that puts the state on track to top 2008 early-vote tallies.... A study released last month by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ... found that black voters -- who overwhelmingly favor Obama -- used early in-person voting at approximately 26 times the rate of white voters." ...
... BY CONTRAST -- AP: "New Jersey will allow residents displaced by Superstorm Sandy to vote by email or fax. Officials announced Saturday that registered voters can vote electronically. A resident must submit a mail-in ballot application by fax or email to the local county clerk." CW: New Jersey is a Democratic-leaning state with a Republican secretary of state/lieutenant governor. Keep making New Jersey jokes, people. It's a lot more civilized than the tyrannical State of Ohio. Middle American virtues? My ass.
New York Times Editors: "This year, voting is more than just the core responsibility of citizenship; it is an act of defiance against malicious political forces determined to reduce access to democracy.... Even now, many Republicans are assembling teams to intimidate voters at polling places, to demand photo ID where none is required, and to cast doubt on voting machines or counting systems whose results do not go their way." ...
... Virginia Election Protection Coalition: "... today [we] released new training materials obtained from Texas-based True the Vote that reveal the organization has been misleading Virginia volunteers on state election law and voting procedures." Via the NYT editors.
... Dara Kam & John Lantigua of the Palm Beach Post: "The Republican attorney who engineered the 2000 Florida felons list, which African American leaders said purged thousands of eligible blacks from voter rolls in the state and helped swing that election to the GOP, also wrote the first draft of Florida's controversial House Bill 1355 that has restricted early voting and voter registration campaigns in 2012. [He is] Emmett 'Bucky' Mitchell IV, former senior attorney for the Florida Division of Elections, now in private practice in Tallahassee and serving as general counsel for the Florida GOP.... Mitchell left the Division of Elections -- where he worked under Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- shortly after the 2000 election." CW: The whole story is disgusting. Via the NYT editors.
Other Stuff
Mayor Bloomberg & Gov. Christie update residents on storm cleanup:
Corporate Welfare on a Grand Scale. Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "Dodd-Frank actually widened the federal safety net for big institutions. Under that law, eight more giants were granted the right to tap the Federal Reserve for funding when the next crisis hits. At the same time, those eight may avoid Dodd-Frank measures that govern how we're supposed to wind down institutions that get into trouble."
Hope Mitt Romney gets a cameo in this, where he says he didn't think it was worth devoting a lot of effort to nabbing bin Laden. The film premieres on the National Geographic Channel tonight at 8 pm ET:
Nick Anderson of the Washington Post: "'Massive open online courses,' or MOOCs, have caught fire in academia. They offer, at no charge to anyone with Internet access, what was until now exclusive to those who earn college admission and pay tuition. Thirty-three prominent schools, including the universities of Virginia and Maryland, have enlisted to provide classes via Coursera.... And higher education's elite is in the vanguard.... MOOC students, for the most part, aren't earning credit toward degrees.... Exactly how MOOC platforms will make money without charging tuition remains to be seen."
News Ledes
New York Times: "An Israeli news channel reported Sunday night that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked the Israeli military in 2010 to prepare for an imminent attack on the Iranian nuclear program, but that their efforts were blocked by concerns over whether the military could do so and whether the men had the authority to give such an order."
New York Times: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg "said at least 20,000 people live in homes that were so severely damaged by the storm surge that they were uninhabitable. Relocating those residents, he said, will be a daunting task."
New York Times: "Several hundred of the Chinese Communist Party's top leaders decided Sunday on a raft of measures that pave the way for a once-in-a-decade leadership transition scheduled to start this week. Among its decisions, the party's Central Committee endorsed the expulsion of the disgraced politician Bo Xilai from the party and promoted two military leaders." CW: this is how "elections" work in China.
Washington Post: "Gun battles shut down a neighborhood of central Tripoli on Sunday, as militias loyal to the government battled another militia that they said had gone rogue. The clashes, which included the exchange of machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, underscored the shakiness of Libya's security even within the confines of the capital, where the country's security forces are headquartered." CW: hey, so far no gun battles between the candidates' supporters, either. Who says the U.S. isn't exceptional?
Washington Post: "New Jersey imposed a form of gas rationing Saturday and New Yorkers overwhelmed temporary gas stations set up by the military as exasperated residents of the storm-damaged metropolitan region formed long lines to get gas for their cars and generators. Officials in New York offered 10 gallons of free gas per person, but so many people showed up they had to plead with the public to hold off until first responders could refill their tanks."
Reuters: "Victims of superstorm Sandy on the East Coast struggled against the cold on Sunday amid fuel shortages and power outages.... Fuel supplies were rumbling toward disaster zones and a million customers regained electricity as near-freezing temperatures descended on the U.S. Northeast overnight. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned the city that it would be days before power was fully restored and fuel shortages ended."
Reuters: "Hundreds of runners in New York City are refusing to let a canceled marathon spoil their Sunday plans and are channeling months of preparation into informal runs intended to benefit victims of superstorm Sandy."
13 Comments
Reader Comments (13)
I'm sensing the election jitters bundling some panties.
Despite the heavy consequences weighing on this election, let's all remember that life goes on.
So remember to "Be Here Now" (R. Alpert), smoke your Colombian Gold, drink some of the hidden moonshine, Zumba your mind free, cook up Momma's secret recipe, call up your friends and gather around some cold ones, or do whatever else that temporarily warms your little soul.
After this endless election shit-slinging, a mental cleansing could do us all good before E-Day.
Cheers to your health and sanity
Virginia is the 2nd state where the training materials for the True the Vote group have been inaccurate. Is it enough to seek an injunction to ban them from polling places in those states on the basis of voter suppression. I know they haven't actually suppressed anyone's vote yet, but the material seem to be a very clear statement of intent. Perhaps an injunction can be at the ready for a judge's signature.
@safari Thanks for your positive thoughts. The normal state of my pants is in a bunch - election or no. I by them a size bigger to avoid constriction. I'll probably relax during my dirt nap.
Re: Oh boy; white bread. Chris Rock makes a good social commercial. I'd like him to address the flip side of the coin.
Hear that funky guitar riff? That's sound over. Then you see the shadow of Obama growing as he closes on the camera. "Obama, he's a bad motha'fu, shut your mouth. He so bad he don't cap he got drones to do that crap. Flies around in a heli black on black, see the sticker on the back? Says "Yo, Clyde, Air Force One is my other ride." Generals salute him as he walks on by, women they touch him and start to cry. So black or white don't give a damn; hell call it tan; just remember he is the man.
Out of nowhere, major burnout hit. It had more impact on me than Sandy. I couldn't stand seeing/reading/hearing about the election. I couldn't stand seeing/reading/hearing about one more damn poll. (Yes, Kate Madison, I've had it, too.) Trying to avoid glancing at HuffPost ever-changing electoral college numbers on the right side of the Web pages: Obama vs. Romney was at 226 to 206, 291 to 191, 253 to 201, 208 to 177 ad infinitum as numbers changed not just daily, but every few hours or so. Aggggggggggggggh! I could barely bring myself to read OpEd pieces, I barely glanced at reader comments. So sick of it all.
Cautiously, I'm dabbing back in to this weakness, this sickness — knowing (hoping) that this will all be over (Phleeeez, no recounts) by Wednesday. My initial foray back to more-things-political was to follow Marie's link to Krugman's blog post yesterday...which led me to the Rick Pearlstein article he referenced "The Long Con: Mail-Order Conservatism". A fairly lengthy, but excellent read!
Among Pearlstein's many gems was : "Another reason for students of Romney’s intellectual development to queasily recall that he told interviewers during that same 2008 presidential run that his favorite work of fiction was Battlefield Earth, the sci-fi opus by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, a consummate shakedown artist in his own right."
I'm looking forward to voting on Tuesday, initially thought I'd fill out and drop-off the ballot at the town hall— but changed my mind. I want to drive to the high school, see the glad-handing local candidates out in front, check in with the little, gray-haired volunteers, step behind the red-white-blue striped curtains with my ballots and VOTE. It will take more time out of my day, but I like the idea of taking it signed, sealed & delivered to Obama!
IF YOU ARE ALL UPSET, AND YOUR HEART'S AQUIVAH
JUST FIX YOUR GAZE ON SANE NATE SILVAH:
www.538.com
Read the charts on the right hand side of the page.
You will instantly feel bettah.
And can toss the Ativan......
BUT.......Remember the Supremes
I know all you erudite readers of RealityChex will have seen the latest from Krugie--but in case not. P.S. He is clearly as fed up as we are! Here is a sliver:
REPORTING THAT MAKES YOU STUPID
..."Today's Financial Times bears a banner headline on p.1: "US election hangs on a knife edge". Aside from everything else, surely this gets the cliche wrong: you rest on a knife edge, don't you? If you try to hang on one, I think you just cut off your fingers.
More important, though, this headline deeply misleads readers about the state of the race - and in so doing, it echoes a lot of political reporting right now. Quite simply, many of the "analysis" articles being published in these final days leave readers worse informed than they were before reading.
As Nate Silver (who has lately attracted a remarkable amount of hate - welcome to my world, Nate!) clearly explains, state polling currently points overwhelmingly to an Obama victory. It's possible that the polls are systematically biased - and this bias has to encompass almost all the polls, since even Rasmussen is now showing Ohio tied. So Romney might yet win. But a knife-edge this really isn't, and any reporting suggesting that it is makes you stupider."
We all know that Paul loves cats and Remembers the Supremes!
Even with the huge number of ignorant, low-info, and yes, racist voters in this country, I think Obama would win except for republican trickery. It's gonna take a fucking miracle to keep them from stealing this election.
To recover a bit from election fatigue, I spent the weekend watching the Breeders' Cup stream from Santa Anita. Horse racing has at least as many pundits as does politics--maybe more per column inch. And I would add, the horse-race pundits know at least as much about their field of punditry as political pundits know about their own. Horse-race pundits are largely the source of bettor information and, therefore, largely the engine that drives the betting odds.
So this morning I checked their efficiency. They nailed it 21 percent of the time. Which, of course, means they missed it 79 percent of the time. But a more interesting number is that among the misses, 55 percent were longshots, way off the mark.
It made me feel better about the election.
I hope I'm not being repetitive, talking about this piece. Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of the NYT published a piece on 11/1 in which she repeatedly smacked Nate Silver with a rolled up newspaper for making a charity bet with Joe Scarborough. Scarborough, as you well recall, based on the color and texture of his toilet paper, disagreed with Silver's predictions and methods.
In her piece, Sullivan went on to demand undying fealty from Silver for the NYT publishing the 538 blog. What planet does this person hail from?
Silver had a significant previous following for his blog, which NYT did not bother to rename and make "their own." As I recall, he was prominently featured in the 2008 election. Me thinks the NYT should be the one kissing his rear, not visa versa. I may be wrong, but I doubt she has ever published any similar "you peed on my floor" comments on somebody like Brooks. You'd think the NYT would stand behind the rigorous methods and analysis that Silver uses to arrive at his predictions.
Maybe Sullivan is a great editor, don't know, but based on this piece she has reached some significant heights in asswipery.
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/under-attack-nate-silver-picks-the-wrong-defense/
Per James Fallows of The Atlantic, the Faux News and R&R Universe is in a tizzy over a comment President Obama made on Friday, when trying to shush supporters who were booing the mention of Mitt Romney's name, Obama said they shouldn't boo -- they should vote. Because, as he said in an ad-libbed line, "voting is the best revenge."
In the final two days of the campaign, the Romney-Ryan ticket and its supporters are all over President Obama for talking about "revenge." In the eyes of the right, that line is the offense -- and apparently they're not kidding. Fox News was immediately on it as the latest election-changing gaffe and outrage. Romney said this in a stump speech yesterday that then was included in an ad: "Yesterday, the president .. told his supporters, voting for revenge. Vote for revenge? Let me tell you what I'd like to tell you: Vote for love of country!"
The Fox Nation headline was "Obama: Vote for 'Revenge,' Romney: Vote for Love of Country.' "
Apparently, Fox Nation doesn't recognize that Obama is so familiar with bookclub-level literary allusions (in this case the aphorism "living well is the best revenge"), rather than anything super highbrow, that he recognizes them as cliches or formulas that can be adapted, and assumes that at least some other people will also recognize them as such. But not the people in today's Ignoramus-Nation.
This is the link to the complete article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/todays-ignoramus-nation-moment-best-revenge/264502/#
@Diane-
I agree completely with your assessment of Margaret Sullivan and the NYT's criticism of Nate Silver. He was the "go-to" guy with his own 538 blog before the Times ever heard of him. His were the only numbers to which I paid attention in 2008--and the only ones I read now. He should tell the paper of record to put their pin heads where the sun don't shine. They need him soooo much more than he needs their arrogant asses!
You can tell this pisses me off. I should be as level-headed as Krugie, but it is not my nature. Think I will go cuddle my cat, who also thinks these "journalists" are a buncha asswipes. (I got that right, did I not, she asked hopefully?)
RTS!
Several things as we come to the stretch run, picking up on James' horse race analogy.
First, I feel I'm constitutionally unable to take Safari's salubrious advice given the amount of time (measured now in years) I've spent following the slime trails left by Republican gangsters whose disgusting, anti-democratic, illegal, and atrociously arrogant machinations have impacted too many elections around the country over the last dozen years or so (maybe longer), including the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. I have no doubt that there was plenty of election stealing activity at work in 2008 but I believe had there not been, Barack Obama would have won by an enormous landslide.
This year, as Marie indicates, the right is preparing a multi-front assault depending on the outcome of the election. Should Obama be able to overcome the stolen votes, vote suppression, and media disembowelment, right-wing operatives will implement the "Stolen Election" meme.
I'm sure you've all seen Citizen Kane. I'm guessing that there will be a substantial number of MSM publishers who will find themselves, on Tuesday night, at an impasse that may require this sort of decision:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iMy0969BTw
Here's what's at stake. If the president is re-elected, the stolen and suppressed votes will enable the right to scream that a) the election was stolen from Romney, and b) the president has no mandate.
It won't matter that the coke sniffing, smirking frat boy, scum-sucking pig of a deserter the right wingers on the Supreme court installed by fiat had zero mandate but governed as if he were the winner of a 99% banana republic style victory, they will scream at the top of their voices that the election was fixed and the closeness of the vote count demands either a recount, a do-over, or (another) call to arms to delegitimize Obama's mandate.
We already see that Republican Brownshirts in Ohio are ready to give a great big "Fuck You and the Horse you Rode in on" to the courts and proceed apace with their election rigging. I mean, really. Who the fuck is going to stop them? They got away with it before. AND the fact that Ohio has attracted such attention for it's illegal activity doesn't mean that other states aren't doing the same thing (Florida, can you hear me?).
Supporters of PBS and Sesame Street held a rally at the Mall in DC to call attention to the great things this service has done for the country and American children over the decades, in response to the Rat's promise to destroy it. The fact that Romney would kill PBS and Sesame Street and all the wonderful things they do, such as teaching children the alphabet and how to treat other human beings with respect, just because they don't spend the lion's share of their time foregrounding right wing lies, indicates the frightening level of the depth of their paranoia, hatred, and almost sexual desire for control over the rest of us who don't bow and scrape before their ideological awesomeness.
Few authoritarian regimes have had such an appetite for control as the Modern GOP. The Stasi could have learned a ton from Rove, et al. The fact that a few laws still get in the way of Total Fucking Right Wing Pogroms Against Democracy is a technicality that Fraud Ryan and his goosestepping supporters will take care of once the Supreme Court (pace, Kate) breaks out of it's cocoon and accedes to its position as provider of legalistic cover to right wing hegemony and control.
So, yeah. I'm pretty fucking concerned. 'Cause even if the president wins, the hate rockets will reach escape velocity before the networks make the call. And the MSM, which now breathlessly reports a "toss-up" (which will provide perfect cover for Rove/Koch/McConnell/Romney screams of "FRAUD AT THE POLLS") will trumpet every stupid, inane, illegitimate lie floated by these pigs.
RTFS, but remember that evil is at work in this election and these motherfuckers are at it to destroy everything most of us hold dear.
We may win, but Frank Rich's prediction that these pygmys are looking forward to 2016 may be the most prescient and important prediction of all.
I sometimes think that if the Republicans could win an election on issues they'd still rather lie, cheat, and steal it, gerrymander voting districts, buy the companies that make the voting machines, and intimidate voters if they can't suppress their votes, and lately try blackmail, threatening to wreck the country if we re-elect Obama.
What? They have already?