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National Democrats
Gary Pearce posted on October 02, 2012 17:19
Here is a debate preview from a TAPster who combines the best qualities of Carter and me: namely, hating both parties equally:
“Political dweebs everywhere will gather around their TVs Wednesday night for the much-anticipated debates between the North Carolina gubernatorial candidates and the Obama-Romney showdown.
“The NC debate is meaningless. The two candidates are good guys and essentially philosophic mirror images of each other. Pat McCrory has such big poll numbers that only a catastrophic debate performance will move the needle.
“The presidential debates, however, could make a difference. A smug Obama will glibly deliver his typical platter of pabulum, and try not to screw up. A superficial Romney will try to prove he cares about 100 percent of Americans, and try not to screw up.
“The undecideds and unaffiliated are sitting out there waiting for a reason to vote for somebody. A juicy debate screwup or two could change the election.”
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 25, 2012 13:57
Imagine Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton sitting in a room together, listening to a pollster describing the mythical undecided voter, saying: She’s forty-six years old. She grew up on a farm or in a working class neighborhood. She’s a working mother now with two children, living in the suburbs. She’s pro-choice. And she’s sitting in the pew in church every Sunday.
Obama nods slowly. Mitt Romney scratches his head. And Clinton grins and says, Yeah, I know that girl. I went to high school with a girl like her.
That’s a long way of saying when it comes to undecided voters Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are talking to a concept they heard from a pollster – while Bill Clinton is talking to a woman he’s met and known.
For example, when the archetypical suburban working mother sees Romney’s new ad about China’s currency manipulation she may think, At last, he’s talking about an issue I care about – but, then again, she may also furrow her brow and sigh, Why on earth is he talking about the Yuan?
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Gary Pearce posted on September 25, 2012 10:40
The worst wounds in politics are self-inflicted. After a week, it’s clear that Mitt Romney inflicted a doozy on himself when he got carried away about the “47 percent” at that high-flying Florida fundraiser.
Voters today are sophisticated consumers of political messages. They know political ads lie. They know that every word a candidate says in a speech, debate or interview is polished and poll-tested.
So their antennae are up for the slightest sign of a candidate showing what he or she is really like – whether it’s under pressure, by mistake or “off the record.”
Romney gave Americans that inadvertent and possibly fatal glimpse of his real self. He cemented the image that Obama’s ads suggested: a rich, callous man who is not only out of touch with most Americans, but actually holds them in contempt.
Even worse for Romney, the camera angle and poor quality of the videotape are even more damning, because they’re real. The waiters in black vests are a special touch.
This campaign has six weeks to go. A lot can happen. But if Romney were a car, he’d be the 2012 version of the Democrat’s 2004 John Kerry model.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 24, 2012 18:10
It’s been a long hard fought political war – for years the folks over at the Civitas Institute have been racing the liberals at Public Policy Polling (who seem to be able to churn out a poll every five minutes) to see who could bombard the newspapers with the most propaganda disguised as polling.
Not long ago the Civitas Institute gained the upper hand when the New York Times reported that PPP’s polls had a “house effect” (which is a nice way to say a bias) favoring Democrats. But then, unfortunately, the wheel came off Civitas’ cart too. They released a poll showing Mitt Romney with a ten point lead (53% to 43%) over Barack Obama in North Carolina which sounded fine – until a reporter spotted a glitch: The poll had 30% of the African-Americans voting for Mitt Romney over Obama.
This is all more or less politics as usual but it may have added a new aphorism to the American lexicon. For years we’ve heard, “The check’s in the mail” and “Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant” – now PPP and Civitas have also given us, “Our scientific poll shows…”
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Gary Pearce posted on September 24, 2012 12:14
I’m just back from several days in Northern California: spectacular rocky coastlines, innumerable wineries, gut-wrenching mountain roads, falling-apart expressways, low humidity, bohemian lifestyles – and no presidential election.
That’s an exaggeration. They have an election, too. But no suspense. California’s 55 electoral votes are already counted toward Obama’s goal of 270. He and Mitt Romney go there only to raise money.
There are no candidate visits, no surrogate visits, no get-out-the-vote drives, no grassroots offices, no candidate ads, no superPAC ads, no ads about Romney and the 47 percent (which, the way he’s going, will be the vote he gets in November), no ads attacking Obama, nothing.
We did run into a street-side Romney booth in San Francisco. “We need to get rid of this guy Obama,” one of the young workers said. He didn’t have many takers. It seemed about as productive as hawking anti-Roy Williams petitions on Franklin Street.
Today, we have a system in which only a handful of states – this year, about nine – matter in the presidential race. North Carolina used to be like California: ignored. But now we’re a battleground. Our votes actually will decide who becomes President! What a concept.
It reminded me of a California-based group – National Popular Vote – that devised an ingenious, if somewhat hard to explain, way of making sure the national popular vote decides presidential elections. It still retains the electoral college system, and it avoids the insuperable hurdle of a constitutional amendment.
Their bill got some traction here before 2008. Carter and I worked with them, and we were intrigued. But it was hard to overcome partisan suspicions about who would benefit. The effort fizzled.
You should check out their plan. NPV is about halfway to the goal of making it happen – and fundamentally changing presidential elections in America.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 24, 2012 11:20
In the Senate race in Virginia George Allen debated Tim Kaine the other night and right off moderator David Gregory – thinking of Mitt Romney and the 47% – pointed out one million Virginians do not pay any taxes. Then asked Kaine, Do you believe everyone should pay something?
In other words, he asked Kaine if he agreed with the Tea Party’s position – and challenged Kaine to take a tougher stand than Mitt Romney on taxing the 47%.
To everyone’s surprise Kaine said Yes – he was open to the idea of a minimum tax.
So what happened?
The next morning the National Republican Senate Committee put out a press release blasting Kaine, telling voters he wants to “raise taxes on everyone in Virginia.”
And that’s how politics works.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 21, 2012 18:09
From Singapore to Casablanca outside our embassies Muslims are rioting – so, exactly how much of the Muslim world is mad at us? Ten percent? Half? Ninety percent? Or, more to the point, how many Muslims agree that taking revenge for a YouTube video by murdering a diplomat who never saw or heard the video is wrong? A handful? A lot? Almost all?
Last Sunday, President Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. told us the attack on our embassy was spontaneous. It wasn’t a terrorist attack. But whoever heard of a demonstrator showing up at a riot carrying a grenade launcher? So who attacked our embassy? If it was terrorists – who were they? Where are they? We’ve tried attacking whole nations (two of them) to stop groups of terrorists and that hasn’t worked out too well – so, this time, how do we tell the terrorists from the Muslims who bear us no ill will?
And, finally, the biggest question of all: Who is going to answer these questions? President Obama? Secretary Clinton? Congress? Lord, help us, is there someone else? How about the Mossad?
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 21, 2012 11:32
Mitt Romney’s getting pummeled for saying 47% of the voters will not support him because no one getting a check from the government’s going to vote for him over Obama.
Even the conservative pundits are giving Romney the blazes.
But while Romney was fumbling the facts he may also have put his finger on our Modern 21st Century Third Millennium Democracy’s biggest dilemma.
David Brooks wrote this about Romney’s faux pas: ‘In 1980, about 30% of Americans received some form of government benefits. Today about 40% do...In 1960, government transfers to individuals totaled $24 billion. By 2010, that total was 100 times as large… entitlement transfers have grown by more than 700% over the last fifty years… and this spending surge has increased faster under Republican administrators than Democratic ones.’
It’s a hard fact in our democracy: A majority can vote to reach into the treasury and help themselves to other people’s money whenever it wants. It’s redefined the meaning of ‘Majority Rule.’ And it’s not a new phenomenon.
Back during the 1820’s, Congressmen from the North (who wanted to protect manufacturers in New England from imports) and Congressmen from the West (who wanted Washington to build roads in their states) got together and passed tariffs – that were primarily paid by Southerners.
After the Civil War the railroad tycoons corralled enough votes in Congress to get the federal government to give them free and clear title to 12,000 acres of public land for each mile of track they laid – and, in the end, the tycoons ended up owning more land than there is in all of Germany.
Social Security and Medicare started out with the best of intentions but, today, unless you have the misfortune of dying young, when you retire the government is going to pay you a lot more than you ever paid into either program – whether you need the money or not.
And there seems to be no solution to the problem – instead it looks like once a democracy gets itself good and organized (which takes around 200 years) this is where it ends up.
So, maybe, instead of backpedaling Romney ought to let fly and say: I know pointing out our government has become a system for plunder is unpopular – but here’s an even harder fact: An economy based on plunder won’t work and it’s just a matter of time before the plunder gets so out of hand the economy collapses. So do we fix the problem now or do we wait for the collapse?
It would probably cost Romney the election but that debate is coming sooner or later.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 20, 2012 09:42
Here’s betting that, whoever wins the presidential race, Erskine Bowles ends up in Washington.
He’s being mentioned as Obama’s Secretary of Treasury. And wouldn’t Mitt Romney be smart to put Bowles – a Southern, Clinton Democrat – in a top position? Maybe Treasury, Budget Director or something out of the box like Defense?
Bowles’ work on the Bowles-Simpson budget commission makes him the gold standard in America today when it comes to rising above partisanship. And they’re getting set to spend $25 million selling that plan.
He already balanced the federal budget once, so maybe he could do it again. Or make an even deeper mark on the country.
Good thing he lost those Senate races. He would have been wasted among those 99 fools.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 19, 2012 09:34
Mitt Romney is going to make me a sorry seer. I blog that he’s bound to come back, then he says the dumbest, most damaging and most unintentionally revealing thing I’ve heard in politics in ages.
Romney’s “47 percent” remarks hurt him on so many levels.
One, he’s wrong. I’m voting for Obama. I know a lot of people who are voting for Obama. I don’t get a government check. Neither do they. But he assumes we’re all a bunch of mooches.
Two, it sounds like he wants to raise taxes on 47 percent of Americans. Which is exactly what the Obama campaign is nailing him on.
Third, it sets in concrete the image of a rich, elitist, callous candidate who divides America into people like him and people like the rest of us. And he shows total contempt for the rest of us.
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