Obama Should Go For It On October 16

Bill Clinton, Master Politician, Reacts To The Debate
Romney: Breathtaking
The First Debate
The Debates (2)
The Debates

Mitt Romney used to be as progressive as Mike Bloomberg on social issues when his playing field was Massachusetts. He was pro choice, he was for gun control. He was pretty much a liberal.

And then he decided to run for president, and he flip flopped because, let's face it, the base of the Republican Party is to the hard right.

Considering how easily he disowned his own tax plan - the centerpiece of his program - during the first debate, I would like someone to tell me where Mitt stands on abortion today. Because, with this guy, you never know.

Don't get me wrong. I am not a big fan of clocks that are right two times a day. People changing their mind is often a good thing. You did not believe in climate change. And then you did your homework. And you changed your mind. How is that a bad thing? You were pro segregation, then you listened to some of MLK's speeches, and you changed your mind. You became a little less racist. How is that a bad thing?

But with Mitt it is weird. I never thought Mitt was a rabid racist, or a rabid sexist or a rabid anything. He became anti abortion. But that is like, there was this guy who was pro segregation in the 1950s, and then two decades later, in the 1970s, he became pro slavery.

That is not someone changing his mind, that is clinical to me.

Mitt's stand on abortion is something like that, only Mitt being pro choice was nothing heartfelt. That stand was a product of market research.

But someone flip flopping on abortion is less harmful than someone fundamentally flip flopping on their fundamental tax plan. Because on abortion, let's face it, the law of the land is not about to be overturned.

But a tax plan is kind of an important detail. That impacts pretty much all other major decisions you take as president. The economy is still recovering. Economic policy details matter. Mitt's tax cut plan will invite back the Depression we just barely avoided.

For two years Mitt was for five trillion dollars in tax cuts, and two trillion dollars in additional spending on defense. Okay, I get it. Those two details would make hard core conservatives happy. I get it, I get it. Tax cuts and strong on defense. I truly get it.

But then when you flip flop on that, I kind of like it. That is progress. If Mitt Romney is no longer for his tax cuts, like he said during the first debate, I want to know. This is a good kind of change of mind.

Going from being pro choice to anti choice is going backwards in time. But if Mitt is walking away from his five trillion tax cut plan, that is progress. That means he read some of Barack Obama's speeches, and spent some time reflecting, and he had an epiphany. I like that. I am not going to hold that against the guy. Frankly, that is what I have wanted all along. I have wanted Mitt to not be for a five trillion dollar tax cut.

But if that is his new plan the American people have a right to know. Where exactly do you stand, Mitt? If you now stand where Obama has stood all these years, welcome aboard. Maybe you can lead the Republicans in the House and bring forth some bipartisan action.

Since there is no longer a substantial difference between you and my guy Barack, are we now competing on style? We are all for it. My guy has a ton of style. They are about to put him on GQ. Again.

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Romney: Breathtaking

This Facebook update by Brooke Ellison sums it up for me.

It must have felt like the final fight in Enter The Dragon to Barack Obama.

 

How do you fight a guy who is all smoke and mirrors? Tax cuts - huge ones - to millionaires and billionaires have been the centerpiece of Mitt Romney's grand plan. Last night he said that was not the case. He said he will do nothing to add to the deficit. So no tax cuts to the rich? But I thought that was kind of central to everything you have to say, Mitt.

Break the mirrors, Barack. That is how Bruce Lee did it.

The Art Of War, Bruce Lee
The First Debate

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It Is About The House, Not The White House

I never doubted Barack Obama would win re-election. For me, all along, it has been about the House, and not the White House. Barack Obama's goal in November is to win back the House. That is what this is about.

Why the House Matters

Mitt Romney has truly become his own worst enemy .... The US Senate looks poised to stay in Democratic control because of a crop of unusually strong Democratic challengers. ..... Democrats have a 74% chance of taking back the House. .... Republicans who know that they could lose control of all branches of government ..... how the last two years have played out. Jobs Bill -- no votes in the House. Affordable Care Act -- the House voted 33 times to repeal ..... While the public views inefficacy in Congress with disdain, the Republican leadership sees it as an accomplishment .... Electing President Obama and defending a Democratically controlled Senate is no small feat, but to truly move this country forward we have to do more. ..... We need 25 seats to take control of the House, and we have dozens of progressives running to make sure we have a shot. ..... the knock out currently happening in Florida

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Andrew Sullivan: Talking Like A True Conservative

Image via WikipediaThe Daily Beast: Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course. ...... Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion. ....... The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. ...... In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) ....... the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression. ....... Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition. ....... Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama. ........ Obamacare .. will reduce the deficit ...... based on the individual mandate, an idea pioneered by the archconservative Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and, of course, Mitt Romney, in the past. ...... Like Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative, it sets standards, grants incentives, and then allows individual states to experiment. Embedded in it are also a slew of cost-reduction pilot schemes to slow health-care spending. Yes, it crosses the Rubicon of universal access to private health care. But since federal law mandates that hospitals accept all emergency-room cases requiring treatment anyway, we already obey that socialist principle—but in the most inefficient way possible. Making 44 million current free-riders pay into the system is not fiscally reckless; it is fiscally prudent. ......... Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death. And when the moment for decision came, the president overruled both his secretary of state and vice president in ordering the riskiest—but most ambitious—plan on the table. He even personally ordered the extra helicopters that saved the mission. It was a triumph, not only in killing America’s primary global enemy, but in getting a massive trove of intelligence to undermine al Qaeda even further. ........ where Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted. ........ By hanging back a little, by “leading from behind” in Libya and elsewhere, Obama has made other countries actively seek America’s help and reappreciate our role. As an antidote to the bad feelings of the Iraq War, it has worked close to perfectly. ....... From the start, liberals projected onto Obama absurd notions of what a president can actually do in a polarized country, where anything requires 60 Senate votes even to stand a chance of making it into law. ....... A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician. ......... the slow and deliberate and unprovocative manner in which it was accomplished made the changes more durable. ....... there are long stretches when Obama seems incapable of defending himself, or willing to let others to define him, or simply weak ........... remember whose strategy won out in the end. ...... This is where the left is truly deluded. By misunderstanding Obama’s strategy and temperament and persistence, by grandstanding on one issue after another, by projecting unrealistic fantasies onto a candidate who never pledged a liberal revolution, they have failed to notice that from the very beginning, Obama was playing a long game. He did this with his own party over health-care reform. He has done it with the Republicans over the debt. He has done it with the Israeli government over stopping the settlements on the West Bank—and with the Iranian regime, by not playing into their hands during the Green Revolution, even as they gunned innocents down in the streets. Nothing in his first term—including the complicated multiyear rollout of universal health care—can be understood if you do not realize that Obama was always planning for eight years, not four. ....... excising the cancer of torture from military detention and military justice ....... We’ve already elected the nation’s first black president and replaced a tongue-tied dauphin with a man of peerless eloquence. ....... Obama has steadfastly refrained from waging the culture war ...... the only way out of that deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP, since the language of victory and defeat seems to be the only thing it understands. ........ a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name

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