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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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CINCINNATI, OH – NOVEMBER 04: Supporters listen to President Barack Obama address a campaign rally at Fifth Third Arena on the campus of the University of Cincinnati November 4, 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio. With only two days left in the presidential election, Obama and his opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are stumping from one ‘swing state’ to the next in a last-minute rush to persuade undecided voters.
Romney staff refusing to let frostbitten children leave PA rally
http://americablog.com/2012/11/romney-staff-refusing-to-let-frostbitten-children-leave-pa-rally.html
November 04, 2012
The “Both sides do it” narrative that just won’t die
For the latest in the historically unaware, the pretentiously smug and the realistically unanchored, you simply must shop the NY Times’ Frank Bruni. Today. You won’t regret it. You also may not believe it, but you won’t regret it. It’s that entertainingly shallow.
Bruni, you see, just wants us to get along, no matter who wins Tuesday. Because, as Bruni counsels in a pompously therapeutic way, “it would … be the mature thing to do.” Yes, mature, even if the adolescent, bullying, Nixonian gangster Mitt Romney were to win by hook or by crook (which he most emphatically will not, but that’s another story). Let’s do be “mature.” Let’s “give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Because, says Bruni in so many words, both sides have neglected this virtuous m.o for too long. The result: nastiness, gridlock and polarization.
Now, you probably find yourself asking, Did the Dems reject Bruni’s suggested m.o. under President Reagan? And you answer yourself, Well, no. Did they reject it under President George H.W. Bush? Well, no. Did they reject it under George W. Bush? Again, no. Did congressional Democrats not work with Reagan and the two Bushes, only to find that congressional Republicans would be altogether intransigent under the Democratic administrations of Clinton and Obama? Yes. Absolutely.
So, Bruni’s conclusion? Both sides have behaved immaturely for lo these many years; both sides have “hunker[ed] down to fight and foil[ed] the victor”; and both sides are guilty of “perpetuat[ing] the political dysfunction in a country being steadily diminished by it.”
My dear Mr. Bruni: a splendid career awaits you–a career in the world of writing civics textbooks. There you can pirouette in perfectly ordered utopias and tiptoe through some Fantasyland’s loviest of republican daisies and amuse the innocent children. There you can bathe and luxuriate in what the clinically untethered call idealism. Here, in the real world, we call it insufferable garbage.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/11/the-both-sides-do-it-narrative-that-just-wont-die.html
November 04, 2012
Very, very close: Obama’s towering EV lead, and Romney’s 6% chance at the popular vote
Nate Silver’s latest aggregation is of 21 battleground state polls, 16 of which have Obama ahead, two have Romney leading (Colo. and Fla.), and three are tied. Ohio is polled by four different organizations; all show an Obama lead, an average of 2.25 percent. In Pennsylvania, “the forecast model puts Mr. Obama’s chances at better than 95 percent.”
Of the latter, Princeton’s Sam Wang writes, “A few days ago, the word was that Team Romney was buying ads in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. If he wins either of those states I will eat a bug.”
Wang’s overall forecast of the popular vote: Obama, +2.1 +/- 1.1%; “I estimate Romney’s chance of winning the popular vote at 6%, odds of 16-1 against.”
If you were unfortunate enough to see “Meet the Press” earlier today, the above might come as shocking news. I caught only bits of it myself, but what I did see was dominated by America’s two greatest bores, Tom Brokaw and Joe Scarborough, both of whom goofily prattled on about this, our close, very close presidential race. You know, the one in which the challenger has a 6 percent Wangish chance of winning the popular vote, thereby righteously swamping Obama’s 307 Silver-predicted Electoral College votes.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/11/very-very-close-obamas-towering-ev-lead-and-romneys-6-chance-at-the-popular-vote.html
Two Americas will choose the president
BY JOY-ANN REID
joyannreid@gmail.com
Next Tuesday, the two Americas will go to war, which, thankfully in a stable democracy, means they hold an election.
One America — call it “Old America” — is overwhelmingly white, mostly older and male, but also full of married, suburban women. It is increasingly conservative and sour on many of the socioeconomic innovations of the 20th century, from anti-poverty programs to freely available birth control and legal abortion. Old America worries that the nation’s generosity is being abused by layabouts and illegal immigrants. It is worried about debt. Well, Democrat-created debt, anyway.
Like the questioner who prompted Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” remark at a Boca Raton fundraiser, Old America thinks people ought to learn to fend for themselves — to stop leeching off the successful. It thinks too many people are asking for “handouts.” It is southern and Midwestern and rural and suburban. It is holed up in a mansion, growling about voter fraud and yearning for the days when government knew its job was to hand out defense contracts and then go away. Old America is sick of hearing about racism and doesn’t get why the left gets so worked up over an Obama monkey joke or two.
The other America — “New America” — is a patchwork of white and black and beige and brown. It is youthful, but not entirely young. It is home to rich celebrities and the inner city poor. It mixes hip-hop with rock ’n’ roll. It over-indexes on Twitter. New America prefers the city to the ’burbs and favors the Daily Show and Letterman over the local news and Leno.
Old America idealizes the 1950s, when the only women a man had to worry about were his wife, his daughter, his mother and his secretary. And maybe his mistress. Women and minorities “had no interest” in being executives at its private equity firm, as Mitt Romney once said of Bain Capital. If a woman did work, she still made it home in time to prepare dinner. She didn’t bellyache for equal pay.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/31/3076567_two-americas-will-choose-the-president.html#storylink=addthis#storylink=cpy
**goosebumps** My President!
The Cincinnati crowd is pumped!
President Obama’s Cincinnati rally. Live stream.
http://www.ustream.tv/cbsnews
The campaign is playing …Lets Stay Together!!!!!!!!!
“Forward” (Official Video)
Jonathan Singer @jonathanhsinger Reuters/Ipsos
Early Vote: VA O+11 (54-43) | OH O+20 (58-38) | FL O+10 (53-43) | CO O+16 (56-40)
http://twitter.com/PrettyFootWoman/status/265182134526955522/photo/1
Political Animal Blog
November 03, 2012 10:25 PM
Just when you thought it was safe to breathe a sigh of relief …
By Kathleen Geier
I’m feeling reasonably sanguine about Obama’s chances of winning, but in the last couple of hours I’ve heard a few things that are making me slightly nervous. I’m not panicking, but let’s just say I’m incrementally more … uncomfortable than I was earlier in the day.
— The first item is the least consequential. At a rally in Ohio on Friday, Obama, paraphrasing the well-known aphorism “Living well is the best revenge,” told a crowd of supporters that “Voting is the best revenge.” It’s a completely benign and unexceptional comment, except, of course, to wingnuts, who predictably are ginning up a full-blown hissy fit over it. Byron York is describing Obama’s remark as “ugly and small-minded” — get out the smelling salts! Powerline’s John Hinderaker writes that it’s a “reminder of Obama’s dark side” (Is HInderaker’s racist pun intentional here? You be the judge!). And the Romney campaign was quick to pounce on the remarks, creating a video called “Revenge or Love of Country,” which implies that the president’s comments were somehow anti-American and unpatriotic.
I seriously doubt that Obama’s harmless comments will cost him any votes, except perhaps from people who were already looking for any excuse not to vote for him anyway. Still, the media has been known to mindlessly chase a silly story like this like my dog Hildy chases squirrels, and no candidate likes any distractions, even manufactured ones, from his preferred message, especially in the crucial last hours of the campaign.
— The second item I saw is actually much more worrying. ThinkProgress is reporting that Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted, has issued a directive that stops just short of giving election officials full permission to invalidate provisional ballots for any arbitrary reason that pops into their heads:
The directive, issued Friday, lays out the requirements for submitting a provisional ballot. The directive includes a form which puts the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of ID provided to election officials. Husted also instructed election officials that if the form is not filled out correctly by a voter, the ballot should not be counted.
These shenanigans are straight out of the Republican Voter Suppression 101 playbook. Husted’s directive directly contradicts a court decision issued last week concerning Ohio’s provisional ballots, and it also seems to contradict both the letter and the spirit of the law. ThinkProgress rightly describes this development as an “11th-hour move” that “could swing the entire election.” Ohio, of course, is the swingiest of swing states, and it’s widely thought that the outcome there could determine the results of the election. Voting rights advocates have filed a lawsuit to reverse Husted’s directive; let’s hope the courts invalidate it in time for before Election Day.
— Finally, there’s this: I am a New Jersey native and my entire family of origin — three brothers, sister, parents — still lives in the state, in the northern and north-central suburbs. Earlier today I had a long discussion with one of my brothers about how things are going there, post-Sandy. He said that things are still fairly chaotic. My family is fine, thank God, but various members, such as my parents, are still without power. There are gas lines that last for hours, Governor Christie has just implemented odd/even gas days (now there’s a blast from the past!). My brother said that even if you do get gas, there aren’t many places you can go — many roads are blocked off and access is restricted at a lot of places. He teaches in the public schools, which were closed all this week but are scheduled to re-open on Monday.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_11/just_when_you_thought_it_was_s040930.php
November 04, 2012 1:03 PM
Election 2012: the G.O.P. whining begins
By Kathleen Geier
In less than 48 hours, Election Day will be here. And while quite a few leading lights of the G.O.P. continue desperatelyspinning the fantastic delusion of a Romney landslide, the smell of their flopsweat is unmistakable, and getting stronger by the minute. According to Nate Silver, the probability of Obama winning has risen to 85%. So it’s not surprisingly that some Republican leaders are already switching gears; in anticipation of a Romney loss, they are already looking for ways to discredit an Obama victory. Here are some of the most popular excuses you’ll be hearing:
— Wah! It’s Sandy’s fault!! The polls are indicating that in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Obama’s approval numbers have gotten a boost. Haley Barbour, Karl Rove, and Romney campaign operatives are spinning the fiction that Hurricane Sandy stalled Romney’s momentum. That’s impossible, Romney never had “momentum” to begin with. The other problem with this argument is the assumption that Barack Obama had somehow benefited unfairly from the storm. But it was by no means certain that Obama would handle the crisis well, and be rightly credited for performance. We all saw how the disastrous response of the Bush administration to Katrina caused severe political damage to George W. Bush, from which he never recovered.
And if part of the reason why the storm may have helped Obama is that voters know that Democrats tend to respond more generously and more competently to victims of natural disasters, what of it? No one forced Mitt Romney to say, as he did during the primaries, that he would get rid of FEMA. Holding him accountable for such statements is only fair. Voters know that Republicans want to slash funding and/or privatize agencies like FEMA; it’s an important part of their anti-government agenda. It is certainly the voters’ privilege to reject these ideas by voting against them.
— Another popular argument to try to discredit the president: hey, Obama may be “the choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites,” but that’s not Amurka, buddy! Everyone knows that Amurka is white people. ‘Specially white people who are dudes. Oh, and of course, rich people! The notion non-whites, the poor, urban dwellers, and unmarried women are second-class citizens whose votes shouldn’t count is straight-up racism and sexism of the most despicable kind. Obama’s detractors will use prettied up phrases — they’ll say he didn’t win over “middle America” or (as per Atrios) “the heartland,” but what they mean is that the votes of those who don’t have white skin or possess a penis, or a piece of paper that legally connects them to a penis-holder, should not count. This argument is of course shameful and beneath contempt. and anyone who makes it should immediately be called on it.
— Another excuse they are cooking up seems to be the argument that if Obama doesn’t win the popular vote by a large margin, it doesn’t count. Funny, but when one of their own lost the popular vote in 2000 yet was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court, they had the chutzpah not only to treat his victory as 100% kosher, but to try to brand it as a mandate to boot! Clearly, though, we’re supposed to flush that recent example down the memory hole
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_11/election_2012_the_gop_whining040934.php
Quote For The Day
“Folks I want to remind you, 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. He wants to turn that clock back so desperately. This time he can really do it tonight,” – Joe Biden, addressing a crowd in Arvada, Colorado
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/
Obamacrat @reelectobama012
Wow Ohio Voter in long line-“If I die tomorrow, at least my vote counts today,” .#p2 .#Forward
Ohio’s GOP Secretary of State Pulls More Voter Suppression Out of His …. Hat
By: Adalia WoodburyNovember 4th, 2012
Just when you thought we knew all the Republican tricks to make voting more complicated, more bureaucratic and more exclusive, Jon Husted came up with an additional step.
Four days before the election, Ohio’s Secretary of State decided to add an extra step to the process for people who are voting with provisional ballots.
Under the previous rules, Election Officials had to complete all the paperwork that goes with a provisional ballot. But not in Jon Husted’s Ohio. He suddenly decided late Friday afternoon, to put the onus on voters to complete the paper work.
According to a report by Brandon Blackwell, Husted ordered county officials to discount provisional ballots if the accompanying paperwork is not filled out properly. According to the same report, voter advocacy groups challenged this latest stunt by Husted in court. Fingers crossed that the Courts will smack down this latest stunt by a Secretary of State who has put partisan politics above his responsibilities to the voters of Ohio.
Provisional ballots are used for many reasons, including if someone shows up to vote at a polling place other than the one they were assigned to. This year is also a special one for provisional ballots, thanks to Husted’s decision to send absentee ballots to nearly 7 million Ohio voters. Of the many people who have yet to return their absentee ballots, many may show up to vote in person on Election Day. That means they will have to vote with provisional ballots, and with that raising the probable number of provisional ballots cast. One may think that asking the voter to complete the provisional ballot paper work is not really that big a deal. When taken in the context of Husted’s other shenanigans, this is a huge deal.
Thanks to Husted, there will probably be a lot more people voting with provisional ballots, and with it, more people taking more time to vote, since it does take additional time to complete the paperwork. I would venture to say that Husted is counting on voters making some sort of error while completing the paper work, which means of course, that their vote will not be counted. Also, there will be long delays, which may in itself discourage people from voting.
There’s still time to vote early, even under the restricted hours that Husted put in place after he was ordered to reinstate early voting during the last three days before the election. Husted set up a double booby-trap with this series of moves, so the best way to avoid falling in his trap, if you have an absentee ballot, vote absentee
http://www.politicususa.com/ohios-republican-secretary-street-pulls-voter-suppression-hat.html
Romney’s Worst Nightmare Comes True, the Media Reports He’s Losing
By: Jason EasleyNovember 4th, 2012
On Meet The Press, Chuck Todd debunked Romney’s Pennsylvania spin by pointing out that the Republican is going there because he is losing in Ohio and Wisconsin.
http://youtu.be/A5OZIwlBPfk
Todd broke down the map as it currently stands, “He could lose Ohio, Iowa, and Pennsylvania and he could get there. The problem is, Wisconsin is looking like a state, it’s a same day voter registration state. So then if you look at it that way, he needs one of these others. In Ohio, if you believe the two-point race there, that would put him over. So that’s why, what explains if you will, David, why Romney is going to Pennsylvania because if you only — if you take away Pennsylvania, he’s only got two routes and Ohio and Wisconsin both seem to be a little where he’s behind.”
The media is seeing through the Romney campaign’s spin, and starting to move away from the toss up/it could go either way talking points that GOP desperately needs to keep alive through election day. The reality is that Romney has not made up any ground in Wisconsin or Ohio. This does not mean that those states are out of play, or that President Obama has the election locked up. It does mean that Romney is behind in critical states on the final weekend before the election.
Romney knows he is losing. Despite conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife trying to provide him political cover for his trip into Pennsylvania by claiming that the state is too close to call, the reality is that Mitt Romney isn’t coming to Pennsylvania because it is a swing state.
He is going to be campaigning there because he wagered all of his chips on Ohio, and so far, that bet isn’t looking like a winner.
The Romney campaign was able to fool a desperately wanting-to-be-fooled media for weeks with their Romentum talk after the first presidential debate, but with less than two days before voters will cast their ballots, the numbers tell a story of a close election that is moving towards the incumbent.
The media has caught on to the poison narrative that the Romney campaign is desperately trying to spin away. When someone as inside the Beltway as Chuck Todd says he is losing, Romney’s not only losing votes. He is also losing the media battle.
It is important to remember that elections aren’t held after the first presidential debate, or on the the weekend before. Presidential elections are held on the first Tuesday in November. The only polls that count are the ones where voters are and will be casting their ballots.
http://www.politicususa.com/romneys-worst-nightmare-true-mainstream-media-admits-losing.html
Plouffe Points Out that Romney Will Rubber Stamp the Tea Party Agenda
By: Sarah Jones
November 4th, 2012
This is so not what Mitt needs right now. On “Meet the Press” this morning, Senior Advisor David Plouffe pointed out that Mitt Romney would be a rubber stamp for the Tea Party if elected. The Tea Party does not poll well, and indeed the Republican Congress has taken a beating in the polls since the 2010 tea infusion.
http://youtu.be/TxsBkgcrLEw
PLOUFFE: Governor Romney if he’s elected has promised he’ll plunge this Congress and this country into a bitter battle over repealing health care. Do we think that’s really going to help the tone in Washington? Absolutely not. He has promised to rubber stamp a Tea Party agenda. You know, Senator Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, put out a statement Friday saying, ya know, the Romney agenda is DOA. So the notion that somehow Governor Romney’s going to come in here and rubber stamp a Tea Party agenda, plunge the country into a health care fight, and that’s going to help solve the dysfunction in Washington, it’s going to be worse.
We had to laugh when Romney claimed that he would be bipartisan. Yeah, Mitt Romney who can’t stand up to Rush Limbaugh is somehow going to magically change when he moves into his Barbie dream house in D.C. Harry Reid pointed out that the very things Romney was promising to find consensus on are things that the Tea Party has already floated but did not pass in Congress.
Reid scoffed at Romney’s magical thinking, “Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his ‘severely conservative’ agenda is laughable.”
http://www.politicususa.com/killshot-plouffe-points-romney-rubber-stamp-tea-party.html
Romney Surrogates Get Beaten Down by David Gregory and Fox News for Jeep Lies
By: Sarah JonesNovember 4th, 2012
Today, a relentless assault on Romney’s auto lies dominated on the Sunday shows, from Fox News to David Gregory. Yes, you read that correctly.
Watch a montage of Romney surrogates getting pushed on the Jeep and GM moving production to China lies here, courtesy of Obama for America:
An incredulous David Gregory on Meet the Press to a frozen Eric Cantor, “The head of Chrysler said that that is deceptive… This from a business leader, Governor Romney, who apparently thinks it’s good business to outsource in order to make companies more competitive. Is this the hopeful, specific agenda that Governor Romney has for the state of Ohio and the country?”
On CNN’s State of the Union, Candy Crowley said, “You’ve been able to unite both corporate America and the unions in this false ad.”
Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “Wasn’t that a mistake, especially when both Chrysler and GM said the ad was misleading and the fact is that Chrysler, far from shipping jobs out of Ohio is actually expanding operations in Toledo.”
Republicans can usually count on the Sunday talk shows as a place to spin their “facts” and even get the host to carry their water for them. Studies prove that Democrats have fewer surrogates on the shows and they get more negative press.
http://www.politicususa.com/romney-surrogates-beaten-david-gregory-fox-news-jeep-lies.html
Mitt Romney’s campaign insults voters
By Editorial Board,
Published: November 2
THROUGH ALL the flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate.
How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers — the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich
How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his breathtaking ideological shifts? He was a friend of immigrants, then a scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.
The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China) and his refusal to lay out an agenda. Mr. Romney promised to replace the Affordable Care Act but never said with what. He promised an alternative to President Obama’s lifeline to young, undocumented immigrants but never deigned to describe it.
And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals. He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or tilting the tax code toward the rich — but he refused to say how he could bring that off. When challenged, he cited “studies” that he maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric, unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually proved him wrong.
This last is important — maybe the crux of the next four years. History has shown that it’s a lot easier to cut taxes than to reduce spending. Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush promised to do both, managed to do only the first and (with plenty of help from Congress) greatly increased the national debt.
Now Mr. Romney promises to reduce income tax rates by one-fifth — for the rich, that means from 35 percent to 28 percent — and to raise defense spending while balancing the budget. To do so, he would reduce other spending — unspecified — and take away deductions — unspecified. One of the studies he cited, by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, said Mr. Romney could make the tax math work by depriving every household earning $100,000 or more of all of its charitable deductions, mortgage-interest deductions and deductions for state and local income taxes.
Does Mr. Romney favor ending those popular tax breaks? He won’t say. But he did take issue with Mr. Feldstein’s definition of the middle class: Mr. Romney said he would protect households earning $250,000 or less. In which case the Feldstein study did not vindicate the Romney arithmetic — it refuted it. Yet the candidate has continued to cite the study.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romneys-election-campaign-insults-voters/2012/11/02/69fcc1fc-2428-11e2-9313-3c7f59038d93_story.html
Posted at 10:26 AM ET, 11/04/2012
Mitt Romney insults the American electorate one last time
By Greg Sargent
Yesterday in Springfield, Ohio, the crowd listening to Barack Obama booed when the President brought up Mitt Romney and the Republican Congress. That prompted Obama to say:
“No, no, no — don’t boo, vote. Vote! Voting is the best revenge.”
Romney promptly pretended to be very outraged by this. He told his supporters:
“Yesterday, the President said something you may have heard by now. That I think surprised a lot of people. Speaking to an audience, he said, ‘voting is the best revenge.’ He 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.”
Romney picked up that refrain a second time:
“Did you see what President Obama said today? He asked his supporters to vote for revenge — for revenge…Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country.”
Of course, Obama was only encouraging people to vote. He was telling them that the real way to express opposition to GOP policies is to vote against them, rather than to merely boo them.
And guess what: You may have forgotten about this one, but this isn’t the first time Romney has attacked Obama for encouraging people to get more engaged in the political process. In September, Romney blasted Obama for saying that “you can’t change Washington from the inside.” That September quote from Obama, however, also constituted urging people to get more involved in politics:
“The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. And that’s how the big accomplishments, like health care, got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out…something that I’d really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people, so they can put pressure on Congress to move some of these issues forward.”
Romney pretended to be very outraged about that, too, just as he is doing with regard to Obama’s perfectly innocuous “revenge” quote.
The important thing to remember here is that the GOP argument for a Romney victory rests explicitly on the hope that those who turned out to vote for Obama last time won’t be quite as engaged this time around. Republicans are hoping the electorate is not as diverse as it was in 2008, and they are arguing that the GOP base’s enthusiasm is much higher than that of core Dem constituencies. The Romney camp seems to think it will help whip GOP base voters into a frenzy — and perhaps boost turnout — if Romney casts the way Obama is urging Democratic base voters to get more involved in the process as something sininster and threatening. This is beyond idiotic; it is insulting to people’s intelligence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romney-insults-the-american-electorate-one-last-time/2012/11/04/84e2f5be-268e-11e2-b2a0-ae18d6159439_blog.html
Posted at 09:07 AM ET, 11/03/2012
Where we are with three days left
By Greg Sargent
Nate Cohn looks at all the most recent polling in Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada — three states that would put Obama over 270 — and concludes:
As of today, there is not a single non-partisan survey showing Romney ahead in any of these three states.
The RCP averages show Obama leading in those states by 2.9, 5.4 and 2.7 points respectively. This comes after two polls yesterday — from CNN and NBC/WSJ — put Obama up three and five points in Ohio. Meanwhile, Cohn notes there is evidence Obama is edging ahead in Colorado.
And in Florida, an NBC/WSJ poll last night put Obama up two points. In the averages, Romney’s lead in Florida ranges from 0.2 points to 1.4 points. For all the talk about his “expanding map,” Romney is still fighting to hold Florida. Cohn concludes:
Obama is far better positioned in Florida than Romney can claim in any of the states along Obama’s path of least resistance to 270.
And in Virginia, the race is within one point, too.
Unless Romney can pick off Pennsylvania, where he trails by 4.6 points or more in the averages, he very likely has to win Florida, Ohio, and Virginia to win the presidency. That’s especially true if he doesn’t win Colorado.
And so, in the three states Romney likely must win, he is behind in one, tied in the second, and holds the most tenuous of leads in the third. He is leading meaningfully in none of them.
Meanwhile, Obama only has to win one of those three to virtually assure his path to 270. And he is leading meaningfully in one, tied in the second, and seriously contesting the third. With three days to go.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/where-we-are-with-three-days-left/2012/11/03/b8176532-25b2-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html
The still center
Sunday, November 04, 2012 | Posted by Liberal Librarian at 8:02 AM
Everyone pause. Sit still in that still center. Let the world around you spin, as you look with equanimity upon it.
We began this journey with a vague notion of what lay ahead. A junior Senator for Illinois with a strange-sounding name decided to run for the highest office in the land. No one gave him much of a chance. He was running against the vaunted Clinton machine. And when he won the nomination, he was running against a grizzled war hero. Yet he beat the machine. And the war hero had the frailest feet of clay. And suddenly, on January 20, 2009, a man named Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office, and an unfolding began.
It wasn’t solely an unfolding of possibilities. His election ripped the festering scab of racial animus from the American body politic. It was a scab thought long healed—especially with his improbable election. But it wasn’t. The healing was only cosmetic, and the forces of reaction responded to his assumption of power in a way that they wouldn’t have even for their bete noir Hillary Clinton. Even Newt Gingrich came to an accommodation with Bill Clinton; no such modus vivendi was to be had between the GOP and Obama. It was, frankly, a death match, no quarter to be given, and none expected, at least on the GOP side.
But that’s the funny thing about Americans. We can be justly criticized as apathetic, uninterested in the grinding drudgery of politics, focused solely on the spectacle, the gladiatorial combat bruited about by the mainstream media. The media promotes the horse race narrative because it’s the only way it knows to keep eyeballs trained on it and delivered to its advertisers.
But most Americans—most—are tired. They’re sickened by the partisan gridlock. And they know, as poll after poll shows, that the gridlock is one-sided. Democrats have extended the hand of cooperation to the GOP numerous times. But this isn’t even the GOP of Newt Gingrich. Not even the GOP of George W. Bush. This GOP is an anomaly in American politics. The denizens of the dark, fevered swamps of the US right have taken over one of the two major political parties in the country. When its candidate for President feels he doesn’t have the security to stand against his party’s most crazed elements, but instead twists this way and that to satisfy both the country’s broad middle and his party’s crazed base, that indicates a party which doesn’t have much of a future, but which can do much damage as its death throes play out.
Most Americans want the parties to cooperate for the greater good. Even many of those who will vote for Mitt Romney want roads to be maintained, infrastructure to be repaired, police and firefighters on the job, and decent educations for their children. What some of those who vote for Romney don’t realize is that the party of their preference no longer exists; it’s a cauldron of paranoia and resentment, the plaything of billionaires seeking to assume power over the country, of radicals who want to destroy any notion of an American commonwealth, where we owe each other and stand together as citizens and human beings. The Party of Lincoln is dying, eaten up by the cancer of its growing hatred for anything which and anyone who doesn’t fit its narrow definition of what it is to be “American”. It is a parasite, feeding off of the fears of its hosts, encouraging them, telling them that they will be left out of the new America envisioned by those “other” people, that they and their children will have no future. It is the height of cynicism. It borders on evil.
And yet, in the face of this opposition, Obama soldiered on. More than any politician for the past 50 years, he had a vision, and everything he has done has been in the service of that vision. Both strategy and tactics have been means to further the goal: of justice, of fairness, of security, of peace. Remember the outcry over the jettisoning of the “pubic option” during the health care debate? That secured the groundwork for healthcare reform. And just this week it was announced that the government would enter into the healthcare market, providing an insurance plan to compete with the private insurance companies, doing more good than the vaunted pubic option would have.
And now we stand on the brink of his re-election. This is what his re-election means in real terms: he will shape the Supreme Court for the coming generation. John Roberts will still be Chief Justice; but unless he decides to throw his lot in with Obama appointees, it will be known as the Obama Court.
What his re-election means is that the Democratic Party will be shaped by those who came of age under Obama: pragmatic, progressive, not afraid of a fight, intellectually equipped to fight against a GOP bankrupt of ideas.
What his re-election means is that he will have four more years for his reforms to take root, until they become part of the commonwealth, and removed at great peril to those who oppose them.
What his re-election means is that a generation will come of age aware of its own power, of its own ability to shape its world, hopeful, not jaundiced, raised in a world where it’s expected that we help each other as a community, rather than looking solely after the main chance
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/11/the-still-center.html
Ohio’s Husted launches 11th-hour scheme
By Steve Benen
Sun Nov 4, 2012 3:35 PM EST.
Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted, has invested an enormous amount of time and energy into putting new barriers between voters and their democracy, though as we’ve reported several times in recent months, his efforts have often been rejected by courts.
But Husted isn’t quite finished.
Four days before Election Day, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted emphasized to boards of elections a step that voters who use provisional ballots on Tuesday will have to take.
Voters will be obligated to write on the provisional ballot form what type of ID they show at the polls and not rely on poll workers to do it for them, according to the directive issued late Friday afternoon
Andrew Cohen, a legal analyst for The Atlantic, walks through what’s transpired.
On Thursday, voting-rights advocates filed an “emergency motion” with a federal trial judge seeking his reassurance that provisional ballots in Ohio will be judged by the standard he endorsed (and Ohio reportedly agreed to) in a recent consent decree. That standard, the plaintiffs say, is “that a provisional-ballot form that has incomplete or improperly completed information regarding the type of identification proffered by a voter should be counted pursuant” to Ohio law, which, they say, makes the poll worker responsible for taking down the information. Here’s a link to that motion.
Ohio has not yet responded to it with a filing in court — the state’s deadline is Monday. But it was a full dayafter this motion was filed that the secretary of state, at 6 p.m. on the Friday before the election, issued his contrary directive, the text of which you can read in this timely piece by Judd Legum.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/04/14922984-ohios-husted-launches-11th-hour-scheme?lite
Cuccinelli reveals why he feels awesome in Virginia (hint: less voting)
By Laura Conaway
Sun Nov 4, 2012 4:28 PM EST
Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican, sent out this political note Saturday from the “Romney/Ryan rally bus.” Key bit:
When I looked yesterday, so far there are over 357,000 absentee votes cast. That’s barely over 70% of the 2008 total. That’s bad for them.
Happily, it gets worse… for them.
Full note from Cuccinelli after the jump. Above, the line for in-person absentee voting yesterday in McClean, Virginia, sent by Dave Fullerton. (“There were young people, people on crutches, old people, all of whom stood in line for almost 2 hours in the cold to vote!”) (How to send us stuff.)
——————————————————————————–
From Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli:
Subject: Here’s Why I’m Optimistic
Date: Nov 3, 2012 5:44 PM
Dear Friends and Fellow Virginians, I’m writing to you from the Romney/Ryan rally bus, in between rallies in Lexington and Christiansburg!
As many of you know, among other things, I am both a grassroots believer and something of a numbers geek. So, last night, after decent voter contact hours had passed, I started analyzing our absentee voter numbers – looking for clues as to the direction of Virginia.
We don’t have no-excuse early voting in Virginia, but about 1/7 or 1/8 of the total vote can reasonably be expected to be cast via absentee voting.
So where do we stand so far and what does it mean?
Then
In 2008, over 506,000 absentee votes were cast. We lost absentees terribly – 64/36. Ouch. That was about a 150,000 vote margin. Super ouch.
Realize that Democrats achieved this kind of margin while beating us overall by only about 53/47. As is common, they did far better in absentee voting than their overall margin.
We lost Virginia by 235,000 votes in 2008, so the absentee margin was over half of Obama’s total margin of victory in 2008.
So, how does this compare to 2012?
Now
When I looked yesterday, so far there are over 357,000 absentee votes cast. That’s barely over 70% of the 2008 total. That’s bad for them.
Happily, it gets worse… for them.
We don’t register by party, so we need to use proxies to see what’s happening.
So, let’s look at it this way. We’ll break down all 134 localities into four groups: 1) those that went for Bush in 2004 & McCain in 2008; 2) those that went for Bush in 2004 & Obama in 2008; 3) those that went for Kerry in 2004 & Obama in 2008; and 4) those that went for Kerry in 2004 & McCain in 2008 (there are only two of these, see below).
I ranked all 134 localities in Virginia from those that are producing the highest proportion of absentee votes compared to their 2008 performance (Buchanan County, 103%), to the lowest proportion (Portsmouth City, 34%).
So, to be clear, in Buchanan County in 2008 there were 672 absentee votes cast; and as of late this week, 694 had been cast – 13% of the 2008 numbers. In Portsmouth City in 2008 there were 7,513 absentee votes cast; and for this year so far? 2,536 – only 34% of their 2008 numbers.
Of the top 10 absentee voter turnout localities this year, 9 are Bush/McCain localities. 22 of the top 25 are Bush/McCain. 41 of the top 50 are Bush/McCain. And 71 of the top 100 are Bush/McCain. Yowza! Looking good!
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/04/14923336-cuccinelli-reveals-why-he-feels-awesome-in-virginia-hint-less-voting
Dems End on High Note in North Carolina Early Voting
In yesterday’s update, Republicans had cut the Dem advantage in NC early voting to 15.8%. After Saturday’s voting, the last full day of early voting in North Carolina, the Dem advantage increased back up to 16.2%, a pretty impressive feat considering that over 62.7% of the likely vote in North Carolina is now already in. That means that Dems are running just a tad ahead of their ’08 advantage in early voting. Will that be enough to stem off a Romney victory? Perhaps not since Obama only had a 1% cushion in 2008. But, with almost 2/3rds of the vote in, Romney’s going to need to have a very good day on election day to stem the Dem advantage. He’s very likely to do that, but the question is, will it be enough? The Dem advantage in ’08 ended up being about 12%, in line with the Dem registration advantage in NC. If Obama’s to win, I think he probably needs to aim for at least a 13-14% Dem advantage this year, something that’s still possible for him with these numbers. There are two really big bright spots for him.
First, African American voting numbers remain high. 27.4% of the vote is still African American, well above 2008 numbers which came in at about 23%. Additionally, the white vote is running at only 67.4%, well below the 72% figure in 2008. If the White vote remains under 70%, Obama may very well still win NC. The other good news? While there are many white GOP votes still left out there, there is one other group of voters still out there: young voters. The fact is, more than 70% of senior voters have already voted in NC, meaning there’s not a lot of them left to vote. In comparison, it looks like less than half of likely 18-29 year olds have voted in NC. 12.9% of the vote is 18-29 year olds so far, well below the 18% estimate in ’08. So, the person who wins NC will be the person who turns out their remaining base, as is always the case. If white GOP voters turn out en mass on election day, Romney’s going to win North Carolina. But, if more liberal 18-29 year olds end up showing up on Tuesday, Obama may be able to ride the early vote lead he currently has to another narrow victory in NC. Will be interesting to see.
http://www.cabpolitical.com/2012/11/04/dems-end-on-high-note-in-north-carolina-early-voting/
Voters Overwhelm Dade Elections For Sunday Voting
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – In an unusual move, Miami-Dade Elections Department decided to allow voters to cast their vote by absentee ballot on Sunday.
By 2:30 p.m. nearly 200 people were in line. Elections department officials said they were so overwhelmed they were forced to close their doors.
By 3 p.m., the doors had re-opened and people in line were given tickets for absentee ballots.
While state law does not permit Early Voting on Sunday, the elections department was permitted to provide and accept absentee ballots.
Miami-Dade elections officials said voters who still want to vote by absentee ballot can also pick one up on Monday at their headquarters in Doral at 2700 NW 87th Avenue.
Voters can either fill out the absentee ballot at the elections department or take it home, fill it out and have it returned by 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Voters can no longer request absentee ballots by mail
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/11/04/voters-overwhelm-dade-elections-for-sunday-voting/
Ok Ladies; I’m heading to St. Cloud to see and hear Bubba Clinton.3 Chics’ is keeping an eye on you, dude.
Have a good time!
Joseph M. Cabosky @CabPolitical
Dems end on high note on last day of early voting in NC. Their margin bounces back from 15.8% to 16.2% http://www.cabpolitical.com/20… …
Expand
Over 62% of likely NC vote in, whites still only 67.4%, well off 72% ’08 figure. Afr. Amer. at 27.4%, was 23% in ’08
Hollywood, Florida Nov 4
D Wasserman Schultz@DWStweets
GOP Senate candidate Rick Berg says victims of rape or incest who get an abortion should be in jail for life—and Romney’s cut an ad for him.
Four Years Ago Today: It Happened Because of You—Let’s Do It Again
LIVE: President Obama Campaign Event in Hollywood, Florida
http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/
23,000 fired up Floridians came to show support for Pres. Obama in Hollywood, FL.
CAMPAIGN 2012 | EARLY VOTING
In-person absentee voting resumes after shutdown
So many voters showed up at the Miami-Dade elections headquarters in Doral to cast absentee ballots in person Sunday afternoon that the department shut down the operation less than two hours in, saying it did not have enough resources to help everyone. – Updated 41 minutes ago
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/#storylink=cpy
crowd chanting “let us vote!”
[wpvideo u42Kh15I]
This is a GODAMN shame. 21st century and Americans are begging to VOTE.
YES
YES
YES
WE WILL NOT BE MOVED.
GO FLORIDIANS!!!
Why The Lines Are So Long In Florida And Ohio
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/11/04/1136701/why-the-lines-are-so-long-in-florida-and-ohio/?mobile=nc
There have been massive lines this weekend in the key swing states of Florida and Ohio, with some voters waiting six hours or more to cast their ballot.
This is not an accident. In Ohio, after attempting to cancel weekend early voting all together, Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) drastically back early voting hours.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott (R) reduced the number of early voting days from 14 to 8.
Here is the result:
Columbus, Ohio
West Palm Beach, Florida
More…
Rick Scott & the Republican Party are CRIMINALS. We cna’t have those negroes voting for the Black guy again, now can we?
NOT.GONNA.WORK, MOFOS
Romney becomes first candidate in 16 years to decline youth debate
By Eric W. Dolan
Sunday, November 4, 2012 13:16 EST
Mitt Romney has become the first major presidential candidate to turn down the Presidential Youth Debate since it began in 1996, according to its organizers.
This year, President Barack Obama answered five questions, including one regarding youth unemployment and another concerning the rising federal debt. Romney, on the other hand, is completely absent from the debate, having declined requests to respond.
“In June both President Obama and Gov. Romney were invited in the hope they would both take this opportunity to address millions of young people about the issues that are most important to them,” the organizer of the debate said in a statement. “Unfortunately, despite our efforts over a four-month period, Gov. Romney declined participation. He is the first and only candidate in our 16-year history to decide not to answer the questions young Americans chose as most important through the Presidential Youth Debate.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/04/romney-becomes-first-candidate-in-16-years-to-decline-youth-debate/
Judge Orders 1 Fla. County to Extend Early Voting
By GARY FINEOUT Associated Press
ORLANDO, Fla. November 4, 2012 (AP)
A judge extended early voting hours in one Florida county on Sunday after the state Democratic Party sued in an effort to give people more time at the polls.
Some voters had faced waits several hours long on Saturday, the last scheduled day of early voting. The judge ruled on a lawsuit filed late Saturday in Orange County after an early voting site was shut down for several hours. The Winter Park library was evacuated when a suspicious package — a cooler — was found outside. It was later detonated by a local bomb squad.
Bill Cowles, the Orange County elections supervisor, said that voters who show up on Sunday will be asked to use a provisional ballot. The extra hours will be offered at only the Winter Park library.
A Republican Party spokesman said the party was not challenging the decision. Brian Burgess said state law requires provisional ballots to be used whenever a court orders an extension of voting hours.
The Democratic state party also filed a federal lawsuit Sunday morning seeking more voting time in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Voting in Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County didn’t wrap up until early Sunday morning because voters standing in line when the polls closed were allowed to vote.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fla-democrats-early-voting-extended-county-17636899
NY Times Editorial: “This Year, Voting Is An Act of Defiance Against Malicious Forces”
Upholding Democracy, Ballot by Ballot
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. Millions of ballots on Tuesday — along with those already turned in — will be cast despite the best efforts of Republican officials around the country to prevent them from playing a role in the 2012 election.
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……
snip
But a great deal of damage has already been done, and the clearest example is that on Sunday in Florida, people will not be allowed to vote early. Four years ago, on the Sunday before Election Day, tens of thousands of Floridians cast their ballots, many of them black churchgoers who traveled directly from services to their polling places. Because most of them voted for Barack Obama, helping him win the state, Republicans eliminated early voting on that day. No legitimate reason was given; the action was entirely partisan in nature.
The author of that law, as The Palm Beach Post revealed last week, was Emmett Mitchell IV, the general counsel for the state Republican Party. Under his guidance, party officials in Florida got thousands of perfectly eligible black voters purged from the rolls in 2000, and got a law passed last year that limited registration drives and early voting days. A federal judge struck down the registration limits, but not before they drove down the numbers of new registrants.
The law cutting back nearly half the number of early-voting days in Florida remains in place, a reaction to the Obama campaign’s successful use of the system…..”
snip
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/voting-rights-upholding-democracy.html?hp&_r=0
Breaking: Romney Paid Zero Taxes From 1996 To 2009
Source: Daily Kos
Using a tax shelter called a CRUT (charitable remainder unitrust) that was held by the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Mitt Romney was able to pay zero taxes (legally) every single year from 1996 to 2009. Why did he stop in 2009? Because he would make public his 2010 tax return, that is why.
This tax loophole was killed by Congress in 1997. However those including Romney that were already using it were allowed to continue it. The way it works, is that Romney makes a “charitable” contribution to the Church of Latter Day Saints and it goes into a trust. Since the trust is held by the church, the money is tax deferred. Any capital gains, are non taxed because of the charities status. Like an annuity, the donor gets a charitable tax deduction and an stream of cash payments. When Romney dies, the church accepts full ownership..
Bloomsberg’s attorneys estimate as the Romneys have received these payments, the money that will potentially be left for charity has declined from at least $750,000 in 2001 to $421,203 at the end of 2011…..
Romney has refused to answer any thing on this topic. His campaign puts out that it was all legal….
Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/04/1155381/-Breaking-Romney-Paid-Zero-Taxes-From-1996-To-2009
Solid success with phone banking here today! Great responses.
Whoo Hoo!
OMG! Miami Dade Supervisor of Elections suspended voting today. They literally shut down the office…with people in line waiting to vote. Cars are being towed!
Making Chili for my kids! Too bad it’s not cold here. My youngest son said “Mom, your Chili is good anytime”! :) I love this kid! He’s always praising Mom’s cooking!
And Josh’s sooooo handsome too!
Thank you very much!
HANDSOME KID!!
and,yum yum on the chili.
South Florida County Extends Early Voting — But Only In One GOP Stronghold
By Judd Legum on Nov 4, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Last night, voters in Miami-Dade County were forced to wait in line up to six hours to vote. In some precincts voters who arrived at 7PM were not able to cast their ballots until 1AM.
In response, Republican-affiliated election officials in Miami-Dade have effectively extended early voting from 1PM to 5PM today by allowing “in-person” absentee voting. But this accommodation will only be available in a single location in the most Republican area of the county.
Nearly every city within 5 to 10 miles of this location — including Hialeah, Miami Springs, Sweetwater and Miami Lakes — has a substantial Republican voter registration advantage.
The most populous city among those is Hialeah where Republicans, powered by a large Cuban community, have an overwhelming registration advantage of nearly 20,000 voters. There will not be an opportunity for in-person absentee voting in downtown Miami or South Dade, where there are heavy concentrations of Democratic voters.
The decision to make the accommodation available was presumably made by Miami-Dade Election Supervisor Penelope Townsley. She is registered with no party affiliation but was appointed to her position by Republican Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
Mayor Gimenez did not request Gov. Rick Scott extend early voting throughout Miami-Dade county. Further, according to Jim DeFede, an investigative reporter for CBS News in Miami, the decision to have in-person absentee balloting was made last night but not announced publicly until 9:30AM this morning.
Requests for comment from the Miami-Dade Election Department were not immediately returned.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/11/04/1136371/south-florida-county-extends-early-voting-but-only-in-one-gop-stronghold/?mobile=nc
Does Krauthammer Have a Point?
by BooMan
Fri Nov 2nd, 2012 at 10:34:36 PM EST
I consider Charles Krauthammer to be a very intelligent man. I think he is intelligent, but I also think he is quite devious in the sense that he cannot be relied upon to say what he really thinks. He’s a manipulator. His arguments don’t roll off the top of his head but are prepared meticulously to have the desired psychological impact. If you take him too literally, you’ll conclude that he is either not very bright or that he’s simply crazy. As a result, he can sometimes be hard to gauge.
There is certainly a degree of scare-mongering in his column today. There’s the boilerplate about how Obama is turning America into a typical European socialist state filled with people who can’t tie their shoes without some assistance from a bureaucrat. We all know that is food for the sheep. But maybe he actually believes that Obama represents a real threat to the Reagan Revolution.
Reaganism’s ascendancy was confirmed when the other guys came to power and their leader, Bill Clinton, declared (in his 1996 State of the Union address) that “the era of big government is over” — and then abolished welfare, the centerpiece “relief” program of modern liberalism.
In Britain, the same phenomenon: Tony Blair did to Thatcherism what Clinton did to Reaganism. He made it the norm.
Obama’s intention has always been to re-normalize, to reverse ideological course, to be the anti-Reagan — the author of a new liberal ascendancy. Nor did he hide his ambition. In his February 2009 address to Congress he declared his intention to transform America. This was no abstraction. He would do it in three areas: health care, education and energy.
To be more clear about it, Krauthammer also made this statement: “Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy.” I agree with that statement, but it seems clear that Krauthammer sees next Tuesday’s election as the potential endpoint of the conservative ascendancy. I’d like to believe that he is correct. As for the next part, I believe he is correct:
If Obama loses, however, his presidency becomes a historical parenthesis, a passing interlude of overreaching hyper-liberalism, rejected by a center-right country that is 80 percent non liberal.
When you put it that way, I guess this election in kind of important.
What say you?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/2/223436/197
Thoughts on the State of the Election
by BooMan
Sat Nov 3rd, 2012 at 10:38:03 PM EST
I just watched most of a program on MSNBC that was hosted by Chuck Todd and which focused on making predictions about the elections. He had Charlie Cook on to talk about the Senate races and I was interested to see that Mr. Cook’s predictions, if true, would result in no net change in the party composition of the Senate. Mr. Todd also noted the oddness of this prospect and added that it would be weird if all these billions were spent and we wound up with the same president, the same Speaker of the House, and the identical split in the Senate.
We would have had all this argument and wound with basically no change at all. How could that happen in a country in which less than one in ten people approve of the job Congress is doing? The only thing I can say is that corporate money and media are putting a pretty heavy thumb on the scale for the Republicans and that is keeping them afloat. I could get into the details of how they go about doing this, but the details are not necessary to explain the phenomenon.
One woman on the show, when asked to make a prediction about an election surprise, said that she thought the Democrats might take back the House. Chuck Todd almost had an aneurysm. It was all he could do not to laugh her off the set. I’ll admit that I will be surprised if the Democrats win back the House, but it isn’t a totally ridiculous prediction. The Democrats are going to win a lot of House seats. The problem is that they are going to lose quite a few, too. I may make an effort to do a detailed prediction before Tuesday if I can find the time, but my rough estimate is that the Dems will win about 27-30 seats but that they will lose 8-10. That puts them at a low of 17 and a high of 22, which is just short of the 25 they need. I don’t think it’s outlandish to think we might exceed those expectations by a handful of seats and win the House.
I also thought Charlie Cook was too bearish on the Democrats’ chances in the Senate. He picked Tommy Thompson to win in Wisconsin, and I just don’t see where he gets the evidence to make that prediction. Three separate polls released over the last three days show Tammy Baldwin ahead of Thompson and getting between 48%-51% of the vote. He also picked the Republicans to win in Nevada, Arizona, and North Dakota. Those are all close races that are tough for the Democrats, but I don’t think it is safe to assume that the GOP will sweep them all. I fell confident about North Dakota and I think the other two are pure toss-ups. While I am concerned about the polling out of Nevada that shows Heller ahead, I also remember the same polling showing Sharron Angle ahead of Harry Reid. And I think Richard Carmona has the momentum in Arizona and has done enough to win over people in the middle to ride a massive Latino turnout operation to victory. Right now, I am predicting the Dems win two of these three races and also pick up the Wisconsin seat for a net gain of three seats. I really think the worst we can do on election night is to pick up one seat.
On the presidential level, I think there is a good chance that Obama will win all the swing states, which will mean that he will have the exact same result as in 2008 except that he will lose Indiana. North Carolina and Florida are too close to call and may require recounts. I don’t feel great about Colorado, either. The polling looks good but the early voting does not. Yet, I think the Obama campaign has momentum and that their ground game will help them modestly outperform expectations.
The odds are that we will wind up with the same president, a Senate that is more progressive but only modestly more Democratic, and a House still controlled by John Boehner, but by only a half dozen seats or so.
I’d recommend getting involved in House races, because stealing that away from the Republicans would be the real surprise and the real game changer on Tuesday.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/3/22383/3292
Rachel Maddow MSNBC@maddow
Pics of early voting lines in FL are just nuts. This is a basic failure of governance. From @WPLGLocal10: pic.twitter.com/Pvd81Uxw
Texans Beat’em Chant!
What we gone do! What we gone do!
What!
What we gone do! What we gone do!
BEAT’EM!
LOL What time are they playing today? Are they playing the Vikings? :-)
They’re playing the Bills now. 21-9 Texans!
14,000 in Concord NH. Largest political event in New Hampshire history!
wow
Gotta love this HISTORY-MAKING moment.
Go Florida Dems! Ain’t No Stopping Us Now! We’re on the move!
Cheating to Win
by BooMan
Sun Nov 4th, 2012 at 10:19:17 AM EST
It shouldn’t be controversial to say that the Republicans are trying to win the presidential election by reducing the size of the electorate. They passed restrictive photo identification laws which were overturned in one court after another. They restricted early voting and weekend voting, in some cases seeing those decisions overturned as well. The Ohio Secretary of State has defied a federal judge and been reprimanded. He continues to defy him, now issuing a new rule about how provisional ballots will be treated that are contrary to a prior consent decree. At Daily Kos, a diarist writes about spending nine hours in line to vote yesterday, all because Governor Rick Scott has reduced early voting hours and hasn’t provided adequate personnel and machines.
The conclusion is unavoidable. The Republicans are trying to make access to the polls so difficult that people will give up and go home. They are going to try to throw out as many provisional ballots as they can, which are really just votes for the president. They aren’t even pretending that they have persuaded the majority of registered voters to support their presidential candidate. But they are trying to win anyway.
This really ought to be the scandal of the year. Yet, rank and file Republicans seem to be perfectly content with these tactics. It’s as if they believe that the Civil Rights Movement never happened, or never should have happened. They are happy to win the election even if they only win by suppressing the vote of working people and students and the elderly and people of color. It’s disgraceful. When Romney talked about the 47% of Americans who won’t support him, he reflected this attitude. It’s an attitude that says that only Americans in certain income brackets and with certain complexions should have a say in our democracy.
But the truth is that the will of the people should decide who wins elections, not the relative effectiveness of voter suppression tactics.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/4/101917/659
Voter Suppression is the CRIME. It always has been. It just depends on who the criminals are, the Repbulicans are the worst, cheating, lying, dishonest, thuggish, ANTI-AMERICANS
Bill Clinton introduces Pres. Obama LIVE NOW in Concord, New Hampshire.
http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream1
BREAKING: Miami-Dade Elections Dept. to open from 1 to 5 for in-person absentee voting TODAY to accommodate overwhelming early-vote turnout
First Lady Michelle Obama: Get Out The Vote
Nina Turner@ninaturner
Alright good people. The count down begins. We must go Blue or go home…Four More For 44! Holla Back Somebody!!!
_________________
Holla!
Saturday Night Shocker: Behind The Spin the Romney Camp Admits They’re Losing
http://www.politicususa.com/saturday-night-shocker-spin-romney-camp-admits-losing.html
Behind their attempted Saturday night media spin was a bit of read between the lines truth. The Romney campaign thinks that they are losing this election.
After a press conference with reporters where David Axelrod and Jim Messina discussed all of the president’s paths to 270 Electoral College votes, the Romney campaign responded with a statement that only the biggest of partisans could believe.
Romney Political Director Rich Beeson had this response to Obama’s numbers and facts, “If the Obama campaign spent half the time trying to get people back to work as they do spinning reporters on why they’re going to win this election, the unemployment rate might not have gone up. That said, it doesn’t matter how many offices you have, staff you hire, or ground game plans you have – you need a candidate who can tell the American people why things will be better, not worse, after four years of their leadership. The choice is clear: Governor Romney is offering Americans a future of more jobs, more take home pay, and less debt. The President can’t do the same.”
Florida Democratic Party sues in Miami federal court to extend early-voting hours! http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/11/florida-democratic-party-sues-in-miami-federal-court-to-extend-early-voting-hours.html …
Cold hits storm victims ahead of U.S. election
By Michelle Nichols and Robin Respaut
NEW YORK | Sun Nov 4, 2012 9:44am EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Victims of superstorm Sandy on the U.S. East Coast struggled against the cold early on Sunday amid fuel shortages and power outages even as officials fretted about getting voters displaced by the storm to polling stations for Tuesday’s presidential election.
Overnight, near-freezing temperatures gripped the U.S. northeast. At least two more victims were found in New Jersey, one dead of hypothermia, as the overall death toll from one of worst storms in U.S. history climbed to at least 112.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/04/us-storm-sandy-hurricane-idUSBRE89N16J20121104
Public Records Reveal Romney Profited From Corruption, Fraud & Racketeering at Bain – Democratic Underground http://demu.gr/1014289470
Of course he profitted. Romney’s the kind of parastie that got America into thie mess we’re in and now wants to slide his pasty white ass into the Oval Office leather.
GTFOH
crooked ass
Bubba’s coming to MN today. He’ll be campaigning in Michele Bachmann’s district.
SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!
Question: Should I go and check him out, get a photo or summ-in? LOL
Time for Bachmann to go! Enough already!
Souls To The Polls, 3 Chics! Lets get this done!
Happy Sunday, everyone!
Good Morning, SG2 & Everyone. :-)
Good Morning, SG2, Ametia and Everyone :)