Led By Delusional Morons, Right Until The End

This whole article about Mitt Romney's campaign is interesting, but this is particularly awesome:

Arriving at his suite in the Westin Boston Waterfront ­hotel, Romney received regular updates from his staff. He made small talk about the Patriots and the Celtics and played with his grandchildren. He was about to concede around 11:15 p.m when Republican strategist Karl Rove made his now-infamous appearance on Fox News Channel, insisting that his own network was wrong in calling Ohio for the president.

The concession call was canceled, followed by an hour of uncertainty. Then, after Fox ­executives dismissed Rove’s concerns and stood by the network’s projection, Romney said: Call the president.

Someone heard Karl Rove's insane ramblings and said "wait! wait, let's see how this plays out"... and then waited another HOUR. One of those people was almost president.

Mitt Romney: Still the Worst

Very excited for the prospect of him leaving out lives forever:

Mitt Romney has a simple explanation for donors as to why his presidential campaign came up short: President Obama gave out too much stuff.

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, the former Republican nominee said during a call with donors on Wednesday that Obama had been “very generous” in doling out “big gifts” to “the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people” as well as to women throughout his first term. Benefits such as access to “free health care,” guaranteed contraceptive coverage, more affordable student loans, and “amnesty for children of illegals,” all combined to give the president a decisive edge in popularity.

“The President’s campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift — so he made a big effort on small things,” Romney said. “Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.”

Yep. Gifts. Not everyone can "earn" all the privilege and wealth that you get when you're born as the son of a CEO massive company/Governor/Presidential candidate. Good riddance.

BUT WHAT DOES HE MEAN??????

Paul Ryan:

In his first interview since losing the election, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) wouldn’t admit that voters rejected his economic vision and instead chalked up President Obama’s victory to a large turnout of the “urban vote.” “I don’t think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare, we clearly didn’t lose it on those issues,” Ryan to local station WISC-TV. “I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race.”

Hmmm... the urban vote! WHAT COULD HE POSSIBLY MEAN????

What happens to the Republican Party?

(Photo from Romney Rally in Lancaster, OH - Via this post of racist signs about Obama)

This has been a question that has been batted around after Tuesday's results, and I think it's a pretty interesting one. First off, we should point out that there are no permanent majorities and anytime a victory leads to talk of wins for a GENERATION that's the first sign that it will never happen. On the other hand, this election, even more so than 2006, 2008 and 2010 has shown some of the real fractures and long term weaknesses in the republican coalition.

So what happens?

Well, first, let's quickly look at what needs to happen long term: The GOP needs to purge the racists from their midst, and move away from anti-gay, anti-women, anti-latino and anti-science/math positions. Why? Because if they don' t they will cease as a viable political party as demographics change.

What will actually happen?

Well, none of the things above, at least any time soon. The biggest misconception out there right now is all the important Republicans will go back to DC, agree they went a bit to far, change all their positions to something more respectable and all will be fine again. This won't happen for several reasons:

1) Changing the fundamental makeup of a political coalition isn't like flipping a switch, it's like turning around a tanker. So for starters, it's not possible for any of these changes to take place immediately even if people actually wanted to make them!

2) In order for change to occur, your coalition needs to be somewhat open to that change. If you've dedicated your life to anti gay or anti-immigrant work, you didn't wake up on Wednesday and realize you've had it wrong this whole time. This is how the Republican base feels. When Obama came out in favor of gay marriage, there was no backlash because the vast majority of Democrats already supported gay marriage. When John McCain cosposored immigration reform, the bill was killed because of anger from conservatives freaking out house republicans. Conservatives don't want immigration reform any more than they did 6 years ago. These are not beliefs that will magically going to go away overnight.

3) And that is the major problem here: These racists, anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-women people are the republican base. And Republicans need them to get reelected. You need constituencies to stay in power in politics, and while the rest of the country is moving in a more progressive direction in all these ways, the republican base shows no signs of doing so. I firmly believe that plenty of the republicans elected to DC don't even believe half the vile BS they're spewing, but they need to keep those constituencies happy in order to not get primaried out of a job.

4) More than any other factor, politicians care about one thing: losing their jobs. If you're a Republican right now, the biggest fear of losing your jobs doesn't come from people pointing out that you're a racist, it comes from the tea party wing of the party that has successfully knocked out multiple popular Republican incumbents who where cruising to reelection. For two straight cycles, tea party primary challenges have prevented the Republican party from achieving control of the senate. These people literally give no fucks. If you were in the position of moderate Republicans, wouldn't you fear them too?

If anyone doubts how deep the crazy resides in their base, please rewatch the Republican primary debates. Booing gay soldiers. Booing Rick Perry's support of the Texas dream act. Cheering "let him die". This IS the Republican party. These aren't views that will change over time, the only thing that will change over time is the people.

The Republican party will eventually evolve and break free of the bigoted neanderthals who are currently driving the ship. That change will come in 20-30 years, not because the GOP wised up and put a few more non-white faces on stage at their convention, but because in 20-30 years, most of the current Republican base will be dead.

Post Election Thoughts

Alright, everyone take a deep breath. A few quick thoughts on last night (written at 2 AM so try to stay with me):

• An absolute ass kicking at the presidential level. As of now, Mitt Romney has one swing state total.
• Major sea change victories on state propositions: Gay Marriage in MD, ME and WA as well as Marijuana legalization in CO and WA. The first time these issues have ever won on a ballot, and I think it is a sign of things to come. Sanity on both gay rights and the drug war are major, major progressive wins.
• The Senate: Holy crap. North Dakota!!! Both Rape twins losing! I'm usually one who argues that we shouldn't be too quick to celebrate how right wing republicans have become, but this is the second straight election cycle where their embrace of unelectable crazy people has cost them a shot at controlling the senate. Amazing.
• The quality of people elected matters, especially in the senate where it's much more important to have strong advocates than back bencher Ds. Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin (The first openly gay, female senator) both fit that bill. And especially Warren. A senator who has made her career fighting the banks? Yes please.
• World's worst human Allen West loses.
• California: Pass prop 30 (increase in tax on rich, sales tax, to fund education) and defeat prop 32 (anti union bill that stops political contributions). The push back on the 2010 anti-union wave continues.
• I'm sure more will be written about this, but Obama (and Brown's) win in Ohio I think are still the after effects of SB5. That push may have burned Republicans in that state for a generation.

This strikes me as a broad victory for progressives in many ways, much more than the presidential race that got all the attention. Onward!

The Question We're All Asking This Morning

Who stands up in the #GOP and says #Latino Gay contraception okay? Jeb Bush? It's not a profile in courage now it's common sense.
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) November 7, 2012

ToT Predicts: Further Predictions!

Electoral Predictions! Fun! Excitement! Being Wrong!

President

Obama wins. 303-235. 51 - 46 Popular vote.

Swing states

Obama Wins: Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia
Romney Wins: North Carolina, Florida (FL will be too close to call tonight)

Senate

Democratic Wins: Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Montana
Republican Wins: Nebraska, Nevada, Arizona, Missouri (that's right, the legitimate rape guy is winning, I'm calling it)
Douche Wins: Maine (Get ready to hear a lot about Agnus King on this blog. He's like Joe Lieberman's douchiness with Joe Manchin's intelligence)

House

Democrats pick up 10 seats, remains in Republican control.

One More Prediction

While you would assume that Republicans would take this loss (or the fact that if they hadn't nominated crazy people they would have had control of the senate both in 2010 and 2012) as a wakeup call that many of their ideas are very unpopular. That will not happen. There will be one, overwhelming takeaway from the right after this election: That they lost because Mitt Romney wasn't conservative enough, or wasn't a real conservative. Take it to the bank.

Important Note

When Ohio is called for Obama, the election is over, even if news networks are saying otherwise. My prediction is that both the state and the election get called around 9:20.

In housekeeping news, there won't be a liveblog unless on of our other blogmates decides to start one up and manage it. Why? Because I'm in a grad school program for public policy, and I have class tonight. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're not the only one, but doesn't seem to be a way I can get out of this one. I'll be on twitter after 10, and maybe will be able to set something up. Otherwise, I'll put up an open thread, or take your thoughts to twitter as well. Put your predictions in the comments if you've got any.

See you all later tonight as the madness unfolds!

VOTE!

Great find by Digby:



There's a reason why the right is doing everything in their power to stop you from voting.

Don't let them win. Vote.

And if you're in Maryland be sure to vote for prop 4 (the MD Dream Act) and Prop (Marriage Equality).

And if you're in Montgomery County, vote no on prop B, which limits the collective bargaining rights of police officers. The county thinks it's so important that they're using taxpayer money to hire canvasers to astroturf support for this bill. Be sure to do your part to defeat it.

In DC Pundit World, It's Only White People That Count

Here's Josh Marshall:

From an article just out from Politico …

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

A broad mandate this is not.

As I’ve written many times before, the second rate product. If this is a subject that interests you, I’d encourage you to read the piece I linked right there.

Or to be more specific, Obama’s winning but not with the best votes. I mean really, if you can’t win with a broad cross-section of white people, can you really be said to represent the country? Really.

Well said.

Most Political Punditry is Completely Worthless

Not all of it obviously, but I'm mainly talking about things you see on TV that don't involve Chris Hayes and things you read in print that aren't Nate Silver.

And when I say it's worthless, I'm not saying that all talking about elections is worthless. It just means that people saying things that go directly against the available data measuring this stuff because it makes the race more interesting. The last couple of weeks online have led to a clash between the Nate Silver/other political modelers going up against the politico/morning joe version of the world. Basically after Romney got a bounce post 1st debate, the political media worked itself into a froth claiming the race was now 50/50 and a complete toss up. The problem, according to those that actually study polling data, was that while Romney had improved in most swing states, he was still trailing in almost all the keys states needed to win, especially Ohio, the most crucial of them all. Yet most of the political media didn't care, writings stories day after day about how tight the race was, when it was clear for weeks since that debate that Romney had moved no closer to actually winning the presidency.

If you're looking for an example of worthless journalism that I'm talking about, read this article from the SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER, (the person in charge of reporting politics) for the Washington Post. It starts explaining Obama's polling lead in Ohio, and you think it might be going in the logical direction... BUT THEN:

After reviewing all of the available public polling data as well as talking to operatives in both parties about the private polls they are privy to, we are convinced that Ohio is a 1-3 point race in President Obama’s favor at the moment.

That — coupled with the state’s electoral history and the absolute necessity for Romney to win the state if he wants to be president — leads us to move it back to the “tossup” category.

Put simply: Ohio today has much more in common with Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire and Virginia (all “tossups” in the Fix rankings) than it does with New Mexico and Minnesota (“lean Obama” states in the Fix rankings).

Seriously look at those sentences, split apart.

Sentence 1: Obama is leading by 1-3 points consistently in all polls, and based on all the information we have at our disposal.

Sentence 2: Because Romney "needs to win the state", Chris Cillizza, the lead politics reporter for the Washington Post, has decided that the state should be considered a tossup.

Sentence 3: Ohio has more in common with the states we're calling tossups than the ones we are calling "lean Obama". What do they have in common? Why is any of this relevant to how the state will vote? Why is it more important than the ACTUAL DATA, SITTING RIGHT THERE AT YOUR DISPOSAL???

These are the jokes that report our election coverage. Why do they do this? Mainly because they provide absolutely no value at all to the coverage of politics and elections, so they bullshit like this to pretend that they do. Would people be less informed if somehow the politics section of the post was missing one day? No, actually they'd be better informed by not reading garbage analysis and made up story-lines that have no basis in reality. The sooner this type of political coverage goes away, the better.

It All Comes Down To Ohio

Get excited people! (mainly Kari)

In our model, Romney has just a 3% chance of winning conditional upon losing Ohio; Obama has just an 8% chance.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 1, 2012

So, in other words, we need to abolish the electoral college.

The Worst

Stay classy Romney campaign:

DAYTON, Ohio — The last-minute decision by Romney high command Monday to suspend politics while Sandy raged sent aides in Ohio scrambling to convert a scheduled victory rally into an apolitical "storm relief event" — a process that tested the campaign's agility, and left a few threads of partisanship inadvertently hanging.

On Monday morning, Romney's local team in Dayton was eagerly preparing to host the candidate the following day. A high school gym had been reserved, a stage had been rented, and a pair of celebrity guests — country singer Randy Owen, and NASCAR driver Richard Petty — had been booked to give the event some B-list heft.

Then, a little before noon, communications director Gail Gitcho announced the cancellation of "all events currently scheduled" for Tuesday. The superstorm that forecasters had been warning about for days had picked up steam, and people throughout the northeast were now bracing for the worst. In a statement, Gitcho said the decision to cancel campaign events had been made "out of sensitivity to the millions of Americans in the path of Hurricane Sandy."

But Boston wasn't quite ready to lose a full day of swing state visibility with a week left in the race. So, after some deliberation, the campaign decided to use their existing venue in Ohio to stage a makeshift, and nonpartisan, humanitarian project. It would be a way for Romney to show leadership — and get on the local news — without looking craven or opportunistic.. . .
The plan was for supporters to bring hurricane relief supplies to the event, and then deliver the bags of canned goods, packages of diapers, and cases of water bottles to the candidate, who would be perched behind a table along with a slew of volunteers and his Ohio right-hand man, Senator Rob Portman. To complete the project and photo-op, Romney would lead his crew in carrying the goods out of the gymnasium and into the Penske rental truck parked outside.
But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it "did donate supplies to the relief effort," but would not specify how much it spent.). . .
But even as Romney, clad in blue jeans and rolled-up sleeves, hustled around his area of the gym, shaking hands, thanking supporters, and stacking cases of bottled water on top of each other, signs of stagecraft remained.

As supporters lined up to greet the candidate, a young volunteer in a Romney/Ryan t-shirt stood near the tables, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, "You need a donation to get in line!" Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, "What if we dropped off our donations up front?"

The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. "Just grab something," he said.
Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their "donations" to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest "Thank you."

Fake "storm relief" even ts in Ohio? Pretending to wash clean dishes? The fuck is wrong with these people?

On Climate Change

Well said Seth Meyers:

What To Expect In Obama's Second Term: In His Words, Off the Record.

There was this back and forth between Obama and an Iowa newspaper the other day that ended up letting a very interesting interview see the light of day. Basically Obama did an "off the record interview with their editorial board, and they were pissed off that it had to be off the record, and publicly said so. In response, the Obama campaign released a transcript of the interview, to prove that they didn't actually care or something, but regardless, an interview that the president initially thought was off the record could show a little more insight into what he's actually planning for his second term than normal stump speech bullshiting. Right? Maybe? Either way, here is the interview:

When you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent — at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit — but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business.

It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.
And we can easily meet — “easily” is the wrong word — we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table.

The second thing I’m confident we’ll get done next year is immigration reform. And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America. And so I am fairly confident that they’re going to have a deep interest in getting that done. And I want to get it done because it’s the right thing to do and I’ve cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008.

So assume that you get those two things done in the first year, and we’re implementing Wall Street reform, Obamacare turns out not to have been the scary monster that the other side has painted. Now we’re in a position where we can start on some things that really historically have not been ideological. We can start looking at a serious corporate tax reform agenda that’s revenue-neutral but lowers rates and broadens the base — something that both Republicans and Democrats have expressed an interest in.

I’ve expressed a deep desire and taken executive action to weed out regulations that aren’t contributing to the health and public safety of our people. And we’ve made a commitment to look back and see if there are regulations out there that aren’t working, then let’s get rid of them and see if we can clear out some of the underbrush on that. Again, that’s something that should be non-ideological.
My hope is, is that there’s a recognition that now is a great time to make infrastructure improvements all across the country. And we can pull up some of the money that we know we’re going to be spending over the next decade to put people back to work right now at a time when contractors are dying for work and interest rates are really low.

Even more solid evidence that he wants to do a completely useless grand bargain: BOO.

Immigration reform: YAY!

Stating that a grand bargain is what's needed to turn around the economy: Terrifying and I pray he doesn't actually believe it.

Conservative BSing about regulations: BOOOO.

Infrastructure spending: YAY!

Who knows how much of this is actually means anything, just figured it was worth passing along.

To Panic or Not To Panic

There are plenty of stories out there about the election tightening, and on some level that's true. Obama has been losing ground to Romney in the polls since that first debate, proving wrong people (such as myself) who didn't think debates would have a large effect on the election .

But how worried should we be? What does this mean?

It's times like this we're blessed to live in a time where we have Nate Silver's polling analysis to tell us what to think.

A few basics:

-Individual polls don't matter, so don't panic about them.

-National polls should be important, but aren't, because we have we are still dumb enough to use the electoral college.

-Polling averages are the way to go, as are state by state polls of the few states our idiotic system decided will count this time around.

-You don't need to remember all these facts if you just read Nate Silver's blog, and trust him.

Currently, based on his electoral college predictions, Nate Silver has Obama chances to win at 68.1%, and that's actually been increasing over the last week.

Don't panic.

That's not to say Obama can't lose, just that these dire headlines don't reflect the current state of the race in our crazy electoral system. Also, there is no one worse than our political media, and they desperately want this to be a close race, not because of any bias, but because it's better for their business. Since the first debate the race has gotten closer in the popular vote, which should be what matters, but is actually completely irrelevant because our country still decides elections using a system that was put in place to give more power to slave-holding states. 

Debate Recap: Horses and Bayonets

6.54 says it best:

This debate is seriously confirming that Romney's foreign policy = Obama + schoolboy bully bluster and massive diplomatic incompetence
— Nick Russell (@nhvzr) October 23, 2012

-From a pure politics standpoint, that might be the most one sided debate I've ever witnessed. Romney barely found ways to rephrases Obama's statements before repeating them, which is not a good look. Rather than simply let Romney look foolish on his own, Obama hammered him with condescending line after condescending line, daring Romney to attack him.

-So as much of a "win" as this was in the political realm for Obama, I can't help but think about how much of a loss this was for liberal foreign policy principles in general. The way both candidates agreed on nearly everything and the excitement they seemed to get from imposing "crippling sanctions" on Iran was really gross. The only time Romney seemed to disagree with Obama was actually from the left when he said "we can't kill our way out of this", which is probably the smartest thing he's said during the whole campaign. Remember when Clint Eastwood pretended Mitt Romney asked "why aren't we leaving Afghanistan now?" That would have actually been a good question.

-Because so much of my discussion of this campaign has focused on Romney's constant lying, it's worth pointing out that he was telling the truth about Obama trying to get a status of forces agreement with Iraq, and Obama was lying when he said that they weren't  Unlike our wingnut friends on the other side, I actually wish this was corrected during the debate, because more truth is important, no matter who it helps.

-I hope it's during my lifetime, but at some point in the future, we're going to look back at how all politicians talk about Israel, and be very, very ashamed. We will look as bad as like those who defended apartheid in South Africa, and the amount that it is embraced so completely by both political parties will just make it worse.

Thoughts?

SNL on the Second Debate

Between this and that undecided voters skit, SNL is really raising their game this political season.

Obama on the Daily Show

Better questions than any interview I've seen of him in some time (looking at you, 60 minutes!). A question on HAMP??? Did someone not tell Jon Stewart that good liberals don't ask questions about negative things during election season? DOES HE WANT PRESIDENT MITT ROMNEY??? Seriously, well done Jon for doing a better job than 99% of the media yet again.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Binders Full Of Women, Coal And Gangbangers

I watched a replay of the debate after my exam, wanted to get a few thoughts out there:

- Although it doesn't appear to be the main take away, the moment where Romney got corrected by the moderator about what Obama said seemed to be the highlight. Debates are all about calling people out, and to be publicly shamed like that seemed like a really bad look.

-The 15 minute stretch arguing about who loves coal, oil and natural gas... with no mention of climate change. Ugh. History will not look kindly on them for that.

-Obama's thing about immigration came off much better than Romney's, but he's deported many, many more people than just "gangbangers". The vast majority, you could say.

-As Kari pointed out in the previous post, the "binders full of women" comment overshadowed what was actually a much more offensive part about how women have different schedules because they need to be in the kitchen cooking for their husbands.

-Once again, 90% of the time Mitt Romney either lied about his previous positions, or just changed them during the debate on the fly. He has yet to face much of a consequence for this, and only time will tell if he does.

-I do wonder how the right watches these debates. It's frustrating for me to see Mitt Romney be a completely different person than he was 2 months ago, how do they feel that he has to hide from their ideology to not seem like a monster.

-Which also makes me wonder how anyone can like Mitt Romney. He's such a spineless coward that it's incredible. I totally understand where Harry Reid is coming from. All politicians have moving principles to some degree, but those all the way at the Romney Hillary Clinton/Specter end of the spectrum are the most disgusting  I understand someone supporting Rick Santorum or Scott Walker. I will never understand someone being a diehard supporter of Mitt Romney.

Also, you can tell I've been off the grid when I missed a story involving Taggggg Romney.

Debate Stuff

Any thoughts?

Image from amazing cartoonist Matt Bors

Midterms will be done soon, and I'll have some of my own.