The Club for Growth chuckles upon finding that Joe Donnelly, the Democrats’ candidate for Senate in Indiana, does not mention his party affiliation in either his campaign biography or his official congressional biography.
On his campaign home page, the only time the word “Democrat” appears is in a comment from a supporter, “We must win back a Democrat Senate seat for Indiana, and I think he is just the guy to do it!”
The Republican candidate in Indiana is Richard Mourdock . . . who says on his campaign biography, “Richard Mourdock was elected Indiana’s State Treasurer in November 2006 and was re-elected in 2010, leading the Republican ticket with over 62% of the vote.”
The blogger Patterico offers an astounding and horrifying story that reveals just how out of control some Americans can be in pursuit of a political vendetta.
Notions like “SWATing” feel like a dangerous escalation of already excessive expressions of ideological rage; once the genie is out of the bottle, then every extremist who feels the ends justify the means will use the tactic against those they hope to harass (or worse). The options for police are truly grim; must they become skeptical or wary about 911 calls describing violent situations?
The only real solution is to catch the perpetrators and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. If I were a prosecutor, and some malcontent was manipulating my city’s police force to be their own tool for harassment, I’d be hell-bent on finding the persons responsible.
The final Morning Jolt before the Memorial Day Weekend looks at Wisconsin and reports of concern within the Obama camp:
Come On. It’s the Obama Campaign. There’s Always Arrogance!
The headline in BuzzFeed is “Not Arrogant Any More” but . . . come on. This is the Obama campaign. There are still a lot of source-greasing gushing profiles to be written about David Axelrod, still plenty of Democratic talking heads who will gleefully predict an Obama landslide, still plenty of pollsters willing to offer results based on samples that have way too many Democrats in them to realistically represent the 2012 electorate.
A big part of a winning election is convincing everyone — your own supporters, the bandwagon folks in the middle, the opposition — that it is not merely a possibility but likely. Bob Dole never did this in 1996; he came out of the primaries hobbled, Clinton softened him up with the ads tying him to Gingrich, and the whole thing was over by this time 16 years ago. The conventions, the debates, the polls never moved around that much.
Most of the evidence suggests that the 2012 presidential election will be close, but one can see the pieces of a Romney landslide assembling here and there — an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high, chronic underemployment, Americans dropping out of the labor force and young people unable to begin careers, gas prices that are high enough to pinch the wallets but not getting the hype of 2008, a vagueness to Obama’s second-term agenda, a Supreme Court declaration that Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment actually violated the Constitution . . . and a Republican nominee who, for whatever his flaws, has built his career on finding struggling businesses and endeavors like the Olympics that need to turn things around quickly.
BuzzFeed’s take:
Two difficult weeks for President Obama have shaken the overwhelming confidence of his campaign in Chicago and of Democratic leaders in Washington, and prompted a depressing realization: This is, at best, 2004, not 1996. At worst it’s 1992.
Democrats had taken comfort for months in the Republican Party’s seeming inability to get behind Mitt Romney, Obama’s healthy lead in the polls, and equally healthy job growth. And for a few, fleeting, moments, Democrats thought the election might just be easy. But Republican division appears to have been merely an artifact of primary politics, and Mitt Romney has proved a consistent, if unglamorous campaigner.
And this week, amid poor economic indicators and continuing voter frustration, Democrats returned to the harsh reality that this election is going to be anything but a walk in the park.
“There was this sense maybe a month or two ago that Obama was really riding high — that he had gotten his base behind him and the economy was doing better and it had this Clinton vs. Bob Dole 1996 feeling — that he was going to cruise,” said one 2008 Obama aide who does not work for this year’s campaign. “And now it feels like it’s going to be really tough — a 2004 race.”
Indeed the campaign is shaping up to be a close-combat battle for one percent of swing voters in a few hundred precincts across three or four states.
While not a sign of panic, there’s some indication that strategy and messaging within the Obama camp is being retooled: “President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign cancelled a planned ad buy in Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia this week — the same states where Mitt Romney has gone up with ads. According to an Obama campaign source, the move is just ‘reweighting markets’ which happens frequently, and not a change in strategy. The campaign has launched over a half-dozen television spots in the past few weeks — part of a $25 million campaign in May. The Obama campaign purchased new airtime next week, though the scale is as yet undetermined, according to a media buyer. The new purchase includes both 30 second and 2-minute spots.”
At Hot Air, Allahpundit finds the perpetual confidence from the Obama team baffling: “Were there really any Democrats who thought Republicans wouldn’t unite behind Romney? Conservatives have spent three years lamenting every move the White House makes; when given a choice between Obama and Not Obama, there was never a scintilla of doubt how enthusiastic they’d be for the latter. And Romney’s big selling point, of course, was electability, so there was also never much reason for Democrats to think they’d win easily among the center. Their only strong hands against Mitt were O’s likability advantage, which might move votes at the margins but likely won’t be decisive, and the hope/prayer that a crude class-warfare campaign might get traction among working-class voters. No dice so far. They still might win — Romney’s political track record suggests he needs a big spending advantage to make him competitive and that’s not happening this time — but this is a national election in a 50/50 age after a rough first term economically. Go figure that the polls might narrow.”
But it’s the Obama campaign. Chronic overconfidence is what they do. They spend all day reading their press clippings that declare how smart they are.
I’ve had a variation of this Greg Gutfeld rant brewing in my head for a while now . . . he calls it the “Oh, never mind then” compromise. (Emily Litella!) I had been contemplating the term “strategic amnesia.”
After a horrific shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where the perpetrator has no known connection to any coherent political argument, Obama calls for a better, more civil public discourse in America, a “new tone” . . . and then Democrats in Congress label their opponents Nazis and “demons,” Scott Walker is labeled Hitler, Joe Biden concurs with a House Democrat that the opposition is acting like terrorists . . .
Civility matters! Hyperbolic, angry rhetoric is creating a culture of hate and violence! . . . Wait, never mind.
“War on women”? Forgotten when a $1 million check from Bill Maher arrives, or when Hustler magazine does awful things to S. E. Cupp.
Democrats tout and celebrate a column that asserts that because the rate of increase in the annual deficits has grown only modestly, the Obama “spending binge never happened” — as if a decline in a rate of increase is the same as a decline in actual spending; we’ve had four years of $1 trillion deficits in our history (even adjusted for inflation); 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Issues rise, get magazine covers, and lead off news hours, and then, once facts arise that contradict the narrative . . . they disappear with a quick shake. (Ironic how many folks in the media laugh at Mitt Romney by comparing him to an Etch-a-Sketch.) Last week, there were quite a few developments in the Trayvon Martin case that complicated the narrative of an innocent teen shot by a dangerous, armed, self-appointed neighborhood watchdog. MSNBC’s prime time, which went wall-to-wall Martin coverage a few weeks ago, didn’t mention any of it.
Facts and issues pop up, and then evaporate into the media ether before we can grab them. I’m sure most folks in mainstream-media institutions roll their eyes when Rush Limbaugh or others call them the “drive-by” media, but it’s easy to get the sense that articles are written, talking points are issued, and speeches are given just to get certain words in a headline — say, “MASSACRE” and “ROMNEY’S FAITH” — hoping the proper subconscious impression will be left with the low-information voters.
Ah, those low-information voters, the oblivious kings of our political system. They’re the remaining demographic in this close election, and so we’re destined to endure six months of everyone in the political world desperately attempting to persuade people who don’t pay attention to the news, politics, or government, who are astoundingly uninformed about news, politics, and government, who really don’t care about news, politics, or government, and who will have as much say about who the next president is as you or I.
Our media culture and campaign-coverage environment somehow manage to feel repetitive and yet riddled with attention-deficit disorder simultaneously.
It’s amazing how fast the conventional wisdom shifts. I have been cautiously optimistic about Governor Scott Walker’s odds in the Wisconsin recall; polls have pretty consistently put him right around 50 percent and his rival, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, in the mid-40s.
Along comes Mike Allen of Politico on MSNBC this morning: “Every indication now is that he’s going to win big.”
Joe Scarborough actually cuts him off in surprise at how Allen so casually asserts that the recall isn’t expected to be close.
“The Left, labor, Democrats, which planned to embarrass him, instead have made him a national figure with a very bright future,” Allen continues. “It was money poured down the drain by Democrats and the Left in a presidential election year.”
John Heilemann chimes in, “You notice the White House, the reelection committee in Chicago, they’ve stayed away from Wisconsin. They’ve done these big ad buys, they picked their nine states, Wisconsin not on that list. The reason is they wanted to see how this turned out. They have kept their distance from it.”
The decision by the Obama administration to issue a visa to Mariela Castro, Raul Castro’s daughter, is sufficiently bad politics in Florida to get DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as well as Democratic Florida senator Bill Nelson, denouncing it:
Fidel Castro’s niece on Wednesday hailed Barack Obama’s support for gay marriage and the loosening of US-Cuba travel restrictions, saying: “I would vote for President Obama.”
Why do I foresee “Soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje” on Miami television and radio stations in the near future?
President Barack Obama, who has spent almost all of his career and adult life in academia, law firms, and government, begins his criticism of Mitt Romney by declaring, “those of us who have spent time in the real world . . .”
This morning, the Romney campaign unveils their second general-election ad, laying out “Day One, Part Two”:
Day One, President Romney announces deficit reductions, ending the Obama era of big government, helping secure our kids’ futures. President Romney stands up to China on trade and demands they play by the rules. President Romney begins repealing the job-killing regulations that is costing our economy billions. That’s what a Romney presidency will be like.
It’s a 30-second ad, so there’s not much room for details, but . . . this is more like a list of goals than a plan to get there.
The Suffolk Poll released its results at 11 p.m. last night:
Republican incumbent Scott Brown (48 percent) clings to a one-point lead over Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren (47 percent) in the Massachusetts race for the U.S. Senate, according to a Suffolk University/7NEWS (WHDH-Boston) poll of likely general-election voters in Massachusetts.
The poll result is well within the margin of error. Five percent of voters were undecided in a race that has drawn interest from across the country, even though the primaries are months away. The race has closed since a February Suffolk University/7NEWS poll showed Brown leading Warren 49 percent to 40 percent, with 11 percent either undecided or choosing someone else.
“In both the February and May polls, Brown has fallen short of the coveted 50 percent mark for an incumbent, while Elizabeth Warren has converted some undecided voters since February,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “This leaves both campaigns no choice but to spend tens of millions of dollars in an all-out war to woo the five percent of voters who will decide this election.”
Warren’s heritage
Seventy-two percent of likely voters were aware of the recent controversy concerning Elizabeth Warren’s heritage. Of those, 49 percent said Warren was telling the truth about being part Native American; 28 percent said she was not telling the truth; and 23 percent weren’t sure. Meanwhile, 41 percent said they believed that Elizabeth Warren benefited by listing herself as a minority, while 45 percent said she did not benefit. Sixty-nine percent of likely voters said that Warren’s Native American heritage listing is not a significant story, while 27 percent said that it is.
That is a pretty good result for Elizabeth Warren. What’s really surprising is that somehow she’s coming through the “high cheekbones, like all Native Americans” brouhaha more likeable to the Bay State’s voters, if this poll is accurate:
Brown’s popularity (58 percent favorable) moved up six points from February (52 percent favorable), while his unfavorable rating remained the same at 28 percent. Warren gained 8 points on her favorable rating (43 percent) since February, when it was 35 percent, but she also tacked 5 points onto her unfavorable rating, which is now 33 percent unfavorable, as opposed to 28 percent in February.
Up in North Dakota, the Democrats’ candidate for Senate does her part to help the president:
In an interview, [Heidi Heitkamp, a former state attorney general] made it clear she intends to keep her distance from Obama.
“I think he’s failed in the one test America had for him, which was to unite the country,” she told The Associated Press. “I think he needed to be more hands-on. … I don’t think he’s done enough to think broadly and come up with solutions that would engage both sides in a reasonable dialogue.”
Obama 2012: Because even his own party’s candidates say he’s failed in the one test America had for him.
The Republican candidate in Heitkamp’s race is Rep. Rick Berg.
Once again, it’s time for another chat with Ana Marie Cox over at the Guardian, this time focusing on the John Edwards trial. The great Mark Steyn offered a surprising and compelling argument against his prosecution here:
The great English jurist Lord Moulton considered the most important space in society to be the “middle land” between law and absolute freedom, in which the individual has to be “trusted to obey self-imposed law.” That is, a gentleman should not lie for political advantage about the paternity of his child. When he does so, it is a poor reflection on him and on those who colluded with him — the Democratic party and the media. What it is not is a crime. As bad as Edwards’s behavior is, the Justice Department’s is worse. The urge to ensnare in legalisms every aspect of human existence — including John Edwards’s rutting — will consume American liberty.
While I agree with the broad conclusion, I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with leaving this sort of shenanigan, working around campaign finance law by having no money pass through the campaign or the candidate – entirely un-prosecuted. John Edwards needed money to get out of a jam and to help keep his campaign viable. In secret, he (allegedly) arranged for one of his wealthiest fans to give $900,000 to keep Rielle Hunter quiet and hidden.
If a candidate can ask wealthy donors to help him out to the tune of six-figures (or seven!) in a way that leaves no paperwork fingerprints or record with the FEC, then the door is open to functional bribery. This time it’s “pay this amount to help me hide my mistress,” next time it might be “pay this person to make a false accusation” or “pay this person to endorse me” or who knows what else.
Today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelunveils a special report, revealing that the Milwaukee Police Department has been misreporting and misclassifying violent crimes — hundreds of beatings, stabbings and child abuse cases — resulting in public summaries that claim violent crime is decreasing in the city… when the numbers are actually increasing modestly.
It’s pretty horrifying:
At the request of the Journal Sentinel, FBI crime experts reviewed these and dozens of other incidents and confirmed that they should have been labeled as aggravated assaults. In addition to the more than 500 misreported incidents, the investigation found at least 800 more that fit the same pattern but could not be confirmed through available public records. The Journal Sentinel has submitted an open records request for those cases.
The misclassified crimes included cases where perpetrators threatened to kill victims; stabbed or cut them with knives; and beat them with canes, crowbars and hammers.
Nearly one-third of the assault cases identified by the Journal Sentinel involved the abuse of children – most were struck in the head with belts and electrical cords, causing cuts, bloody eardrums and black eyes.
Instead of accurately reporting the weapons used as firearms, knives or blunt objects, the department reported them to the state and FBI in a way that avoided triggering scrutiny by those who review the numbers.
Criminologists reviewed the Journal Sentinel’s findings and said they showed a pattern of misreporting that has helped drive down the city’s crime rate.
And the phenomenon is too frequent to be simple human error:
Sam Walker, criminology professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, said the Journal Sentinel’s investigation identified patterns that raise questions about the department’s procedures.
“That clearly indicates a systemic problem in the department – there has to be a failure of leadership,” he said. “If (police) do it in one or two cases, it’s not a big deal. If they do it in a large number of cases, it’s suspicious and probably improper. It’s something that needs to be corrected immediately.”
Why are you reading about this on a political blog? Well, one would wonder how high this effort to misrepresent crime statistics went up – was it just in the police department, or did it come from someplace higher? Where was the mayor during all this?
After all, the mayor isn’t shy about bragging about these declines: “I’m extremely pleased to report that in the last four years, we’ve seen dramatic declines in both violent and property crime. Between 2007 and 2011, total crime decreased 21.1 percent. This number translates into 25,508 fewer crime victims. The hard work of the Milwaukee Police Department is having a profound impact on our neighborhoods.”
Say, who is the mayor of Milwaukee? Tom Barrett? Where do I know that name?
Ah yes, he’s the Democrat challenging Scott Walker in the recall election. Say, let’s look at his campaign web site: “Tom has worked with law enforcement, community groups and residents to develop proactive strategies, and he has empowered the city’s police department with the resources and strong leadership it needs to get the job done. As a result, violent crime in Milwaukee has decreased by 20% over the past two years, and homicides are at the lowest levels in more than 20 years.”
Oh, are they, Mr. Mayor? Just how much faith do you have in those figures?
The Republican Party of Iowa tries to convince us that the caucuses were hunky-dory:
GOP Survey: 79% Give High Marks to Iowa caucuses
DES MOINES, Iowa– A new non-scientific survey shows seventy-nine percent of Republicans rate the accuracy of the presidential vote tabulation process used at the 2012 Iowa caucus as excellent or good.
That accuracy question received the highest rating in the survey of Republicans who attended the Iowa caucuses.
The survey of 669 Republicans by the Iowa Caucus Review Committee was conducted Monday, May 7 through Sunday, May 13. Of those who responded, 250 also offered ideas and suggestions on how to improve the caucuses. The information will be used by the committee which is developing recommendations to improve the Iowa caucuses. The next meeting of the committee is 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 30th at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids.
On the other hand, 68% gave a poor or fair rating to the release by the Republican Party of Iowa of caucus vote results to the media and public.
Seventy-one percent said their overall view of the Iowa caucuses was excellent or good.
Sixty-two percent of those who received caucus training said it was excellent or good. However, 43% indicated they received no training.
“This is very useful information for the committee,” said Bill Schickel, committee chairman. “It tells us what we are doing right and gives us guidance in the areas that we need to improve.”
The survey was conducted by email utilizing Survey Monkey software.
A poll via e-mail! An admittedly unscientific one!
In case you’ve forgotten, this is the caucus – the first in the nation, giving the state an influence in the nomination process that is wildly disproportionate to its population or even cultural influence – that could not say with certainty who won. To refresh: “Lost in the mail, lost in the paper shuffle, and possibly misfiled were among the reasons that Republican leaders in five Iowa counties gave as why votes were ultimately not counted in the Jan. 3 caucuses. Eight Iowa precinct caucuses in five counties lost the documentation of the Jan. 3 caucus straw poll — called Form E — and could not be counted in the final totals for the tightest caucus contest in history.”
So, yes, Iowa Republicans, there are some areas you need to improve, like the minor detail of recording and counting the votes, which is basically the purpose of the whole thing.
May I recommend scrapping the caucus and moving to primaries, which allow more people to participate?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a widely respected member of Congress, stopped short of criticizing the president, but made it clear that the campaign should pivot.
“It’s done,” she said. “Go on to other things now.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told The Hill, “I think the average American … hopes that this campaign will focus on competing visions for how to strengthen our economy, help create jobs and move the country forward.”
Pressed on whether he thought Obama’s campaign had operated within those guidelines, Coons paused.
“I’m not going to comment on President Obama’s ad,” he said, shaking his head vigorously.
As noted in the Jolt, an increasing number of prominent Democrats are publicly doubt the wisdom of demonizing Bain Capital for doing what it did best – attempting to turn around struggling companies, prospering when the turnaround succeeds, moving to bankruptcy when the turnaround efforts fail: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former Obama car czar Steven Rattner, former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and most infamously, Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
Is Romney’s management at Bain fair game for public scrutiny? Absolutely, but the Obama campaign is making its arguments in a ludicrously ham-fisted and inaccurate way.
One can argue that investment and business experience are not perfect training for the Oval Office. (Of course, that’s not all Mitt Romney’s done in his life, looking at his experience as a governor, turning around a scandal-ridden, calamitously mismanaged Olympics, etc.) But what man goes into the office perfectly prepared for the duties of the presidency? Does haberdashery (Truman), Hollywood (Reagan), peanut farming (Carter), the CIA (George H. W. Bush) or baseball team ownership (George W. Bush) prepare a man for the presidency? Or are they best perceived as achievements and a career path from an earlier stage in life that may or may not shape how they approach the presidency? Does the Obama campaign truly want to argue that community organizing is better preparation for the presidency than corporate management? (And a pretty ineffective community organizer at that.) The man who was in the Senate for about ten minutes – okay, two years – before running for president wants to argue that Romney doesn’t have enough government experience to handle the job?
The argument of the Obama camp is that somehow Romney’s work at Bain means he won’t be able to enact policies that will build prosperity. That assertion remains unproven, and we know what we get with another four years:
America has tried a president (and a cabinet!) with exceptionally little private sector experience… and we’ve seen the results.
The man who ran up more than $5 trillion in debt in less than four years tells us we dare not elect Romney, because he’s too focused on the bottom line.
UPDATE: The editors of the Washington Postexamine Obama’s insistence that he doesn’t want to demonize all private equity investors – certainly not all of the ones that donate to him! – with the rhetoric in his ad:
What we’re left with is a president who seems content to present an even-handed view of private equity at his news conferences while propounding a much more tendentious one in his campaign advertising.
Among all the swing states, Florida is increasingly looking like the one where Romney will breathe easiest:
Gov. Mitt Romney holds a 47 – 41 percent lead over President Barack Obama in Florida, where 63 percent of voters say the president’s support of same-sex marriage will not affect their vote, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
Another 25 – 11 percent of voters, including 23 – 9 percent among independent voters, say Obama’s support of gay marriage makes them less likely to support his candidacy. Adding Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio to the GOP ticket would give the Republican Romney/Rubio team a 49 – 41 percent lead over President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Romney’s lead in the horse race compares to a 44 – 43 percent tie in a May 3 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University and a 49 – 42 percent Obama lead March 28.
UPDATE: The headline for this post originally said that Romney was “surgining” in Florida. This is a little-known term that means to surge with surgical precision*.
* The term is little-known because I just made it up.
The midweek edition of the Morning Jolt features the latest sudden lapse from the “new tone” of political civility in South Carolina, the latest from Wisconsin, and then last night’s… somewhat surprising primary results:
Happy Arkansas and Kentucky Primary Night, Mr. President!
After Hillary Clinton thrashed Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, I wrote that Obama would be the first president who would need to appoint an ambassador to that state.
Arkansas and Kentucky aren’t looking like very friendly territory, either.
Four in ten Democratic voters chose someone other than President Obama on Tuesday in primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky.
In Arkansas, John Wolfe — a perennial, long-shot candidate — took 41 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, with 71 percent of precincts reporting. Obama came in just under 60 percent. The Associated Press did not call the race for Obama until close to midnight.
And in Kentucky, 42 percent of Democrats chose “uncommitted” rather than cast a vote for the incumbent president. Obama took 58 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
“Considering that a felon in prison did about that well in West Virginia’s primary against Obama a few weeks back, perhaps the Democrats might consider the possibility that they are going to lose the general election,” writes Clayton Cramer.
Both of these states are considered deep red for 2012, but the demographics of Jacksonian white working-class voters in these states aren’t culturally all that different from voters in large swaths of swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and even northern Florida. (Yeah, Democrats aren’t going to contest the Tarheel State that much this year. Public Policy Polling will insist otherwise, but…)
Would an energy policy so opposed to coal production that the Vice President bellows, “no coal plants in America” be a factor in this region, by any chance?
Because not every American can become a “web designer” like “Julia.”
Expect to see a lot of this ad from Crossroads GPS, which echoes the themes in focus groups of disappointed Obama voters from 2008:
Lack of entry-level jobs, older workers unable to retire, runaway national debt, health insurance more expensive… it is a target-rich environment for the Romney campaign.
The new spot will start airing tomorrow and run for three weeks with a rotation of :60 and :30 second versions on network affiliates in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Crossroads GPS is spending just under $10 million on the advertising campaign.
And when you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who got laid off and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so that they can attract new businesses. Your job as President is to think about how do we set up a equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.
And so, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is I knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as President. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.
1) While the job of the president is not to maximize profits, a president would ideally be attempting to instill within the government some sense of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, budgetary discipline, waste reduction and elimination, and other ways of avoiding runaway spending; with $5 trillion in new debt run up in less than four years, all of these traits have been absent from Obama’s presidency.
We’re not worried about profits, Mr. President. We’re worried about stopping an endless string of catastrophic losses.
2) “Your job is to think about those workers who got laid off and how are we paying for their retraining.” Indeed, Mr. President, and the vast majority of federal retraining programs are expensive, ineffective, and redundant: “A newly released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report exposes a broken web of federal job training and employment programs. Nine federal agencies spent approximately $18 billion annually to administer 47 separate employment and job training programs. Many of the programs are duplicative, but GAO‘s most shocking revelation is that ―little is known about the effectiveness of most programs.”
3) “Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so that they can attract new businesses.” But those decisions are best made by local communities, not having the federal government selecting the sites for those clusters with earmarks and preferred companies like Solyndra (which just coincidentally donate a lot of money to your reelection campaign). As Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers pointed out, the federal government makes a lousy venture capitalist.
4) “My job is to take into account everybody, not just some.” Except that Obama likes to forget about some people, like GM bondholders, the taxpayers who footed the bill for the GSA junkets, Catholic institutions who are forced to violate their principles, competitors of firms that get big contracts after making large donations to the president’s campaign, competitors of firms and institutions that are granted waivers under Obamacare, the coal industry, potential Boeing employees in South Carolina, the privacy of donors to groups that disagree with him…
5) “My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.”
Well, the country’s economy is barely growing now, and it has stagnated for the entirety of your term. Unless you would have us celebrate 2.2 percent growth, there’s not much reason to believe your policies will ensure better growth 10 years from now and 20 years from now.
For contrast, in the second quarter of 1983, GDP grew 10.9 percent, third quarter 6.5 percent, fourth quarter 7 percent, first quarter of 1984 7.4 percent, second quarter of 1984 5 percent. That’s what a real recovery looks like; under Obama, we’re still struggling to hit 4 percent quarterly growth.
Change you can believe in: “Traffic congestion dropped 30 percent last year from 2010 in the USA’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, driven largely by higher gas prices and a spotty economic recovery, according to a new study by a Washington-state firm that tracks traffic flows.”
Yes, Obama leads among registered voters, 49 percent to 46 percent. But among adults – which includes folks who may not even be registered to vote… he’s up 49 percent to 45 percent. In other words, he can’t crack 50 percent even among a sample of adults.
“In an open-ended question, 52 percent name the economy and jobs as the single most important issue in their vote; all other mentions are in the single digits. Among individual economic issues, unemployment is the chief concern, again by a wide margin.”
“While overall preferences are fairly steady, the gender gap has narrowed. Obama leads by 7 points among women who are registered to vote, 51-44 percent, compared with 57-38 percent in 4April. (It’s now a 47-49 percent Obama-Romney contest among men.) The change chiefly is due to married women, who went from a scant 4-point tilt toward Obama last month to a 38-55 percent split in Romney’s favor now.”
“Married women are more apt than men, or other women, to say they’ve gotten worse off rather than better off under Obama’s presidency.”
Some folks will look at this next point and argue the survey under-samples Republicans, but the pollsters are at least consistent in their methodology of determining each party’s share of the electorate.
A challenge for Romney, meanwhile, is the continued deficit of Republican loyalists. On average across 2003, 31 percent of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, their highest annual average on record in ABC/Post polls since 1981. That’s fallen off since, averaging 24 percent this year, and about the same, 22 percent of all adults (and 25 percent of registered voters) in this survey. Thirty-two percent of adults identify themselves as Democrats, with independents outnumbering both groups, as they have almost continuously for the past three and a half years.
Interestingly, “The debate over Romney’s work at Bain Capital does not look to be helping either candidate; Americans divide, 21-21 percent, on whether they see his background buying and restructuring companies as a major reason to support or to oppose him. Most say it’s not a major factor.”
An entire one percent rate the economy “excellent,” which is consistent with the entirety of Obama’s presidency. The 16 percent rating it “good” is actually the best of his presidency. But the percent rating it “not so good” is at its highest, 47 percent, and another 36 percent still rate it “poor.”
Booker is not the only Democrat to question the aggressive, negative portrayal of Romney’s work in private equity. Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. said today he agreed with “the substance” of Booker’s comments and “would not have backed out.”
“I agree with him, private equity is not a bad thing. Matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances,” the Democrat said in a separate appearance on MSNBC earlier in the day.
Former Obama administration economic adviser Steven Rattner made similar comments last week, calling a new Obama campaign TV ad attacking Romney’s role in the bankruptcy of a Bain-owned steel company “unfair.
One criticism of the Bain attack has been the notion that it’s hypocritical for the President to attack Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, yet raise money from private equity donors like Blackstone Group president Tony James, and top Obama bundler Jonathan Lavine, currently a managing director at Bain. It’s an obvious line of attack that’s been kicking around for a week now, and was the subject of Anderson Cooper‘s first question to Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt on tonight’s AC360.
“How can President Obama attack Mitt Romney on his time at Bain, highlighting only times when Bain cost companies jobs, and at the same time hold high priced fund raisers with the head of another private equity firm that’s done work with Bain, the Blackstone Group, there are people who have worked at other private equity firms in his own administration?”
LaBolt started off right, explaining the pertinent point that Mitt Romney himself has bragged about job creation as a “corporate takeover specialist” at Bain Capital, when job creation is about as central to private equity as fertilizer creation is to dairy farming.
But even as Cooper tried to get him to answer the hypocrisy question, LaBolt plowed right through him with more talking points. Five or six times, Cooper tried to get LaBolt to answer that one question, only to be met with uninterrupted talking points, or naked subject changes.
On Morning Joe, Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s subsequent video explaining that he has no real quarrel with the tactics and methods of the Obama campaign is compared to a “hostage tape.”
“One image says it all: The flag of the seal of Newark, being burned by angry crowd of Obama staffers outside Booker’s embassy gates… Ever since Shah Daley left the Obama camp, there has been fear that the radical young students had taken over the movement… Analysts note that in his hostage tape, Booker blinks in Morse code, ‘MY CITY STILL NEEDS A THRIVING FINANCIAL SECTOR.’ … A figure with ties to both the Obama camp and high finance, like Jon Corzine, may be permitted to visit Booker’s conscience in captivity…. The angry mob of Obama staffers is now chanting, “DOWN WITH THE GREAT LIEBERMAN,” an ancient figure associated with betrayal in their faith… In an ominous development for the fate of Booker’s conscience, Ayatollah Axelrod has declared it guilty of “apostasy against our deity.” When Booker’s conscience called the Bain attacks “crap” and “nauseating”, he committed blasphemy under the strict orthodoxy of Obamism… All across the country, candlelight vigils are beginning, with millions praying for the safe release of Cory Booker’s conscience.”
It’s best enjoyed while listening to the classic Nightline themes, found here.
Great news for Scott Brown in Massachusetts: “‘This is a race that is a dead heat,’ said state Democratic Party chairman John Walsh, citing a recent poll and insisting the flap has had no effect on Warren’s standing as the party’s front-runner. He said no one is talking about replacing her. ‘It’s not a sentiment that is out there at all.’”
I suppose if you offered Warren a clear path to the nomination, like a gift, and then decided you wanted to take it back, it would make you an… eh, never mind, too easy.
But as Bob Torricelli taught us, it is never too late for Democrats to switch out a doomed, scandal-plagued candidate for a more electable replacement.
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