Barackface

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The NDA Option For Nitish

English: Image of Narendra Modi at the World Economic Forum in India (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gujarat polls will help NDA choose Nitish or Modi for PM: BJP

The BJP was happy with Nitish Kumar for saying that JD-U and BJP would contest the next Lok Sabha polls together

Gujarat has 26 MPs to Bihar's 40. Bihar is twice as big as Gujarat. And Modi's economic record in Gujarat has been impressive, but Nitish' record in Bihar has been even more impressive. There is no coalition government in Gujarat. But Nitish has proven to be the master of his alliance with the BJP in Bihar. Bihar is more representative of India at large than is Gujarat. Most Indians are still farmers living in villages. So Nitish is more representative. And Nitish has no Godhra blemish. That is a big one. Nitish will make the BJP more acceptable across the country.

If the BJP were to project Nitish as the prime ministerial candidate for the NDA that is better than Nitish trying to put together some kind of a Third Front.

A Roadmap For Nitish
Nitish Is My Lula

For Bihar, CM Nitish Kumar turns November 4 Adhikar rally into battlefield

Enterprising leaders of the ruling party have unleashed a billboard blitzkrieg depicting party president Sharad Yadav as Lord Krishna and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as Arjuna in the battlefield of Mahabharata ahead of the much-publicised November 4 rally.

King Modi seeks Delhi Throne
Revealed: Narendra Modi's strategy to win votes
Narendra Modi vs rivals: how they match up in elections
Narendra Modi set for hat-trick?

How Black Is Black?

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I never did have patience for those who in 2007 sought to know if Barack Obama was black enough. And I am no apologist. My passionate feelings against racism are matched perhaps only by my passionate feelings for democracy for those who suffer under dictators.

I was in New York City and it felt like every black politician in town was outside the Barack Obama camp for, let's face it, he was not going to win.

For Barack Obama to win the top political office in the world with his skin color and to do the best job he can - which he has - is what is best for black America. This dude is not your pastor, he is not your civil rights leader. He is an executive. He has a job. He is on salary. He answers to an electorate.

Doing right by his job is the best thing he can do for black America, as for white America. One of the things I noticed about his stimulus bill in 2009 was that he was pumping billions into inner city schools. Those are Martin Luther King level steps in my book. Education is the way out for the young blacks in America. And Barack Obama knows. Because that was the path for him and Michelle.

He has emphasized education, he brought about health care reform, a long progressive fantasy. And if you talk about the Great Recession, where was FDR in 1936? Nowhere. It was finally the huge stimulus of World War II that dug America out of the Great Depression.

I am for a second stimulus bill, this time for a trillion dollars. And so the blacks in America just like progressives across the board should be thinking in terms of retaking the House, not if it is worth keeping the White House.

Barack Obama showed up after five centuries of non whites getting the shaft. His rise to the top is a tectonic shift. It speaks of the man but also the times. Perhaps this is to be a new century.

Barack Obama should do his job, but that should not stop black civil rights leaders from stepping forth to help take race relations in America to the next level. Where are they? Who are they?

I'd want Barack Obama to stay focused on public policy rather than get sidetracked by vague deliberations on race.

The Price of a Black President

the modern Republican Party’s utter disregard for economic justice, civil rights and the social safety net. ...... Whether it ends in 2013 or 2017, the Obama presidency has already marked the decline, rather than the pinnacle, of a political vision centered on challenging racial inequality. The tragedy is that black elites — from intellectuals and civil rights leaders to politicians and clergy members — have acquiesced to this decline, seeing it as the necessary price for the pride and satisfaction of having a black family in the White House. ...... 28 percent of African-Americans, and 37 percent of black children, are poor (compared with 10 percent of whites and 13 percent of white children); 13 percent of blacks are unemployed (compared with 7 percent of whites); more than 900,000 black men are in prison; blacks experienced a sharper drop in income since 2007 than any other racial group; black household wealth, which had been disproportionately concentrated in housing, has hit its lowest level in decades; blacks accounted, in 2009, for 44 percent of new H.I.V. infections. ....... The political scientist Daniel Q. Gillion found that Mr. Obama, in his first two years in office, talked about race less than any Democratic president had since 1961. From racial profiling to mass incarceration to affirmative action, his comments have been sparse and halting. ..... It wasn’t until earlier this year that Mr. Obama spoke as forcefully on a civil rights matter — the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in Florida — saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” ..... “puzzling the idea that a president who happens to be black has to focus on black issues.” ....... the new cadre of black politicians who serve largely black constituencies, like Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia and Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama — all of whom, like Mr. Obama, have Ivy League degrees and rarely discuss the impact of racism on contemporary black life. ...... “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” The political scientist E. E. Schattschneider noted that conflict was essential to agenda-setting. Other interest groups — Tea Party activists, environmentalists, advocates for gay and lesbian rights, supporters of Israel and, most of all, rich and large corporations — grasp this insight. Have African-Americans forgotten it?

What's Wrong With Americans?

I am offended Obama is not leading Romney by 10 points and on his way to taking back the House.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Tight (2)

English: 1860 elections in the USA results by state (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am not counting on North Carolia (sorry Lamont), but everywhere else we are competing, even in Florida we are. Obama is looking at a clear electoral college victory.

Tight
The state of play: Where we are, ten days out

Ten days before the election, the race for the presidency is essentially where the median political-science forecast issued two months ago projected it would be: a statistical dead heat in the popular vote, as measured by the latest tracking polls. ...... except for some political scientists, almost no one envisioned this state of affairs a month ago .... Obama still holding an edge in electoral-college votes, even as the national tracking polls are dead even ..... projects Mr Obama to win 332 electoral-college votes compared to 206 for Mr Romney ..... expects Mr Obama to win somewhere close to 302 electoral-college votes ...... Ohio is the main pillar in the Obama firewall. ..... Mr Romney has racked up larger polling leads in a few states. ..... “on average, 50% of the national two-party vote translates into 247 electoral-college votes” .... a great deal of uncertainty regarding the true relationship between the popular and electoral-college vote. ..... dwindling number of undecideds—now only about 5% of the electorate

Storms and elections: The politics of Hurricane Sandy

A well-handled disaster can strengthen an incumbent president .... To be brutal, a certain amount of bad weather on election day helps conservatives in every democracy. In crude terms, car-driving conservative retirees still turn out in driving rain, when bus-taking lower-income workers just back from a night shift are more likely to give rain-soaked polls a miss. ...... The very first early voters are those who cannot wait to vote: they are the partisans who could be seen queuing outside polling stations in Ohio or Florida on the first mornings of early voting, like bargain-hunters hitting the sales. ..... There are others who believe that Sandy will benefit the president, with the storm freezing the election campaign, and Mr Romney's perceived momentum, in place

G.O.P. Turns Fire on Obama Pillar, the Auto Bailout

Mr. Obama’s relatively strong standing in most polls in Ohio so far has been attributed by members of both parties to the recovery of the auto industry, which has helped the economy here outperform the national economy. ..... Romney incorrectly told a rally in Defiance, Ohio, late last week outright that Jeep was considering moving its production to China. (Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States.) ...... dispatched the investment banker who helped develop the bailout, Steven Rattner, here to discuss Jeep’s plans and the auto rescue with local news organizations. ..... The auto bailout was one of the first major moves of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and gave Mr. Romney an early chance in opposing it to prove his conservative credentials. ..... Romney wrote an Op-Ed article in the The New York Times — given the title by the newspaper “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’’ In the piece Mr. Romney wrote that in the event of a bailout, “You can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.” ........ Jeep began a joint manufacturing venture in China in 1984 and today makes some vehicles in Egypt and Venezuela.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Tight

8% unemployment is a lot, and that explains why the polls are so tight. But it was a Romney like figure who took that to 10%, and if it were not for Obama, that might still have been 15% or worse. And if the Republican Congress had not been so blindly obstructionist, the rate might have been down to 7% by now going on to 6. A Romney like person brought about the mess, and Romney's prescriptions over the past few years would have taken America to a Europe like mess of all austerity and no growth, no jobs. If anything, this country needs a second stimulus, this time of a trillion, with no tax cuts, all active spending, a ton of it on taking gigabit broadband to every American.

The choice 10/6

The gulf that separates the policies of the two candidates and their parties seems wider than in any election in living memory. ..... Mr Romney wants a much smaller government (except when it comes to throwing America’s weight around overseas, where he wants to boost defence spending from 3.4% of GDP to a target of 4%). To that end, he proposes to lower taxes, dramatically cut spending on everything other than the armed forces, adopt a balanced-budget amendment, repeal Mr Obama’s health-care reforms and overhaul big “entitlement” programmes such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—the government schemes for, respectively, health-care for the elderly and the poor, and pensions. Even food stamps, the last refuge of America’s poorest, would be on the chopping block. ....... Mr Romney wants to ban gay marriage and, in almost all cases, abortion, although neither step is in the president’s power. Mr Obama is resolutely pro-choice and, after much dithering, now says he supports gay marriage. Immigration is another fault-line. ........ Mr Romney wants to make life so miserable for all those in the country without permission that they will “self-deport” ...... Romney .. promises to cow countries that have crossed America, including China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela ....... Romney .. says the causes and effects of global warming are too uncertain to justify expensive remedies. ......... Most polls have shown the two candidates within a whisker of one another for months, although Mr Obama has recently showed signs of pulling away. Americans do not often turf out sitting presidents: over the past 70 years, only three—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush senior—have been shown the door after one term. ........ it has been over 70 years since unemployment was so high at the time of an election. ..... economic discontent is shared by Americans of all stripes: young and old, rich and poor, male and female, white and minority. ...... Mr Romney, with a personal fortune of some $250m .. the wealthiest presidential candidate in generations ..... a race between limping candidates ................ Mr Romney, meanwhile, is an extremely capable businessman. As well as creating a fabulously successful private-equity company, he turned around the failing Salt Lake City winter Olympics of 2002. During his time as governor of Massachusetts he ran the state in a pragmatic manner, co-operating with the Democratic legislature to close a big budget shortfall, in part by raising revenue, and to pass the health-care reforms on which Mr Obama’s were based. ...... Almost all this advertising, needless to say, is negative...... Where previously there was hope and change, in short, there is now fear and loathing.

States of play

Polling over the past few days shows little movement in the race, with Mitt Romney enjoying a slight advantage nationwide and Barack Obama holding the edge in the electoral college. In Ohio (which is being surveyed daily) Mr Obama is maintaing a lead, as he is in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Colorado, Iowa, Florida and North Carolina (where early voting is under way in earnest) are still very tight. If the election were held today, Mr Obama would win 286 electoral-college votes to Mr Romney's 252

White working-class voters: Fed up with everyone

2008, when he became the first Democrat to carry Indiana since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 ....... working-class whites, once the majority of the electorate, accounted for just 39% of voters in 2008. ..... They favoured John McCain over Mr Obama by 18 points. This year polls show them preferring Mr Romney by even larger margins: 25 points ........ social issues are much more significant for working-class voters in the South, a majority of whom own guns and strongly object to gay marriage ...... in the manufacturing cities of the Great Lakes region, many of which have a strong union tradition that does not exist in the South, the prime concerns are far more likely to be the economic dislocation caused by automation and globalisation ....... He never holds a campaign rally without pointing out that he supported a government-funded bail-out of the car industry and Mr Romney did not. He also talks up his plans to increase taxes on the wealthy and to make it harder to ship jobs overseas ...... These arguments seem to be working for Mr Obama in Michigan and Ohio, which have lots of jobs in the car industry and where he remains ahead

The swing states: Ohio: Coal or cars?

with the election just ten days away, Ohio is too close to call. Although most polls put Barack Obama ahead, Mr Romney has closed the gap to just a point or two ..... Ohio: the unemployment rate, at 7.0%, is nearly a point below the national average ...... to cars. An estimated 850,000 Ohio jobs depend on the industry, and his rescue of GM and Chrysler has helped to save a lot of them ...... In the end Ohio will be settled not by ideology, but by the grim mechanics of voter turnout. ...... OFA Ohio now boasts 125 offices, against the 40 Romney “Victory Centres” in the state. ...... Dashboard, a whizzy app that helps volunteers meet up, place phone calls to undecided voters and watch the latest Obama videos.

The youth vote: Young, drifting but back

Young voters backed Mr Obama by such a huge margin in 2008 (66% to John McCain’s 32%) ....... The unemployment rate for 18- to 29-year-olds stands at 11.8% ..... In early October a Harvard Institute of Politics poll found 55% support for Mr Obama among under-30s, next to 36% for Mr Romney. ...... Just 28% said they preferred Mr Romney’s economic policies. ...... Almost as many under-30s describe themselves as conservative (33%) as liberal (37%). ..... In its polling throughout 2012 the Pew Centre has found that just half of young voters claim to be registered to vote; lower than at any time since 1996 ...... In 2008, she says, young voters would weep tears of frustration when told they had missed the deadline to register during the primaries. This year few paid attention until Labour Day. ..... since 2008 the story has been the inability of government to protect citizens from the ravages of recession. ....... the stronger organisation of Mr Obama’s ground campaign

Latinos and the election: Throwing votes away

72% of Latino voters plumping for Mr Obama, next to a pitiful 20% for Mitt Romney ....... the anti-immigration arms race conducted by the party’s presidential candidates, very much including Mr Romney, in this year’s primaries seems the best explanation for its difficulties in winning Latino support. ..... swelling numbers of Mexican-Americans have turned Colorado and Nevada into battlegrounds. New Mexico, once a swing state, is widely considered a safe bet for Mr Obama this year ..... The Latino population in Texas is growing so quickly ..... George W. Bush, who won around 40% Latino support in 2004 because “he knew how to eat the tamale.” ...... In polls Latinos emerge as optimistic, aspirational types with a fierce belief in the importance of education.

Barack Obama and black voters: Returning to the mountaintop

He was descended not from slaves, but from an immigrant African father and a white mother. His mother raised him in Hawaii (just 2% black) and Indonesia. In 2007 Hillary Clinton had much higher favourable ratings among blacks than Mr Obama did. Many of Mr Obama’s earliest prominent supporters were white and Jewish, and indeed he has faced consistent criticism, first as a candidate and then as president, for being too aloof from the black community. Only after defeating Mrs Clinton in Iowa, which is less than 3% black, did he start to attract large numbers of black supporters. ...... one of the more salutary indirect effects of Mr Obama’s inauguration was that it put paid at last to the notion that blacks have self-appointed “leaders” who interpret the political views of black Americans to white America. After all, Messrs Jackson, Smiley and West may have thought Mr Obama was too unseasoned and accommodating to be president, but 95% of black American voters disagreed. ....... in 2009 the median wealth of a white household was 20 times higher than that of a black one, the largest gap since the federal government began tracking wealth data by race in 1984. The median wealth of black households had fallen by 53% over the preceding four years, compared with just 16% for white households. In August 2012 the unemployment rate for blacks was 14.1%. That was down from a high of 16.7% in August 2011, but it still far exceeded the national average of 8.1%. ...... stubbornly high black unemployment, combined with Mr Obama’s perceived indifference to it ...... the host of voter-ID and voter-registration laws enacted since 2010 that have the effect—and arguably the intent—of making it more difficult for black Americans to vote. Courts have rejected some of them (notably a Texas voter-ID law), but plenty remain. Small wonder that many black Americans are entering the election’s home stretch peeved that Republicans seem to have given up trying to persuade them, and have resorted instead to trying to keep them away from the polls

Election issues: foreign policy: It's not easy being indispensable
Who won the foreign-policy debate?
The foreign-policy debate: A win for Obama

To a remarkable degree, Mr Romney tacked to the moderate centre, seeking above all to distance himself from the record of George W. Bush and the sweeping ambitions of the neoconservative right. ...... Romney has a (frankly nonsensical) plan to set American defence spending at the arbitrary level of 4% of national wealth ..... Judging by Mr Romney’s answers, he is confident that his conservative base is fired up and ready to vote, and so can afford to tack smartly to the centre in search of rustbelt voters worried about jobs lost to China. Many of his answers sounded tailored to a block of undecided voters long ago identified by Romney aides as a key target: middle-aged women worried about schools and jobs for their children. ..... recent polls have shown the president’s once imposing lead among women shrinking to single digits. ....... At times, both men headed a farcical distance away from foreign policy, as they sought to appeal to war-weary, inward-looking voters. ...... After the race-altering shock of a disastrous first debate for the president, back on October 3rd, this third debate left the contest where it has been for some days: absolutely deadlocked.