Barackface

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.

The foreign-policy debate: Neoconservatism goes underground
US Elections 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

New York Times For Obama

English: Barack Obama delivers a speech at the University of Southern California (Video of the speech) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Barack Obama for Re-Election

the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold .... An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives. ...... Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged. ..... Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and hobbled economic recovery. ........ Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas. ...... approaches the election clearly ready for the partisan battles that would follow his victory ...... he would challenge the Republicans in the “fiscal cliff” battle even if it meant calling their bluff, letting the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing them to confront the budget sequester they created ........ Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments. ...... Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform law takes a big step toward universal health coverage, a final piece in the social contract. ...... Starting in 2014, insurers must accept all applicants. Once fully in effect, the new law would start to control health care costs. ....... Obama prevented another Great Depression ...... Stimulus should come first, and deficit reduction as the economy strengthens. ..... At the last debate, Mr. Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are funneling arms to jihadist groups. .... Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor ..... The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics is truly disturbing. ...... Romney .. says he is not opposed to contraception, but he has promised to deny federal money to Planned Parenthood, on which millions of women depend for family planning.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Is Mitt Moderate?

Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do want him in the center. I do think his primary season stances on abortion were fake. But he never came over to the center, not on economic issues, not on social issues. His party convention was his chance to do so. He did not make the move. Mitt has not changed his extremist policies. His recent rhetoric of moderation is fake.

Romney’s Edge: Moderate Mitt Takes Florida by Storm

Romney sounded more conservative during most of this year’s Republican primaries. But he morphed back into The Pragmatic Massachusetts Governor during his triumphant first debate with President Obama on Oct. 3, and he’s been lavishing Moderate Mitt on the Sunshine State ever since, starting with an Oct. 5 rally in St. Petersburg, where he offered emotional personal anecdotes. Women voters there have warmed to his softer rhetoric on contraception and abortion, and even Florida’s non-Cuban Latinos, especially in the all-important I-4 Corridor between Tampa and Orlando, are listening to Romney’s promise to forge the comprehensive immigration reform that Obama pledged but has not delivered.

Boost for Obama as US economic growth beat forecasts

Obama's 2008 opponent John McCain beat him among white voters by 12 points. According to the Washington Post poll, Obama is trailing Romney among whites by 23 points. .... Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House council of economic advisers, said that over those 13 months the economy had expanded by 7.2% overall.

Up to 40 percent may vote early in election; Obama ahead

polls of people who already have cast ballots show President Barack Obama with a comfortable lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney .... Obama leads Romney 54 percent to 39 percent among voters who already have cast ballots .... About 18 percent of registered voters already have cast ballots ...... Early voting, which began in some states in September, is now underway in nearly all 50 states, either by mail-in or in-person voting. Political scientists who specialize in early voting predict that a record 35 to 40 percent of all U.S. voters will cast their ballots before the November 6 election. ..... states like Iowa and Ohio - both of which are considered pivotal in the election - show a faster pace of early voting than in 2008. ..... As a sign of the importance the Democrats place on early voting, Obama became the first sitting president to vote early when he cast his ballot in Chicago on Thursday.

David Axelrod On 2012 Campaign: Trajectory Of Race Is Set
A case for Barack Obama

He has confronted two inherited wars and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. He brought America's misguided adventure in Iraq to an end and arrested the economic downturn (though he did not fully reverse it) with the 2009 fiscal stimulus and a high-risk strategy to save the U.S. automobile industry. He secured passage of a historic health care reform law - the most important social legislation since Medicare. ...... he showed himself to be an adult, less an ideologue than a pragmatist, more cautious than cocky. Despite Republicans' persistent obstructionism, he pushed for - and enacted - stronger safeguards against another Wall Street meltdown and abusive financial industry practices. He cut the cost of student loans, persuaded auto manufacturers to take an almost unimaginable leap in fuel efficiency by 2025 and offered a temporary reprieve from deportation to young immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents. He ended the morally bankrupt "don't ask, don't tell" policy that had institutionalized discrimination against gays in the military. ...... Obama swept into office as a transformative figure, but the expectations built up by the long campaign thudded back to earth amid an unexpectedly steep recession and hyperbolic opposition from the right. That the GOP has sought to block his agenda wherever possible is undeniable, but truly great leaders find ways to bring opposing factions together when the times demand it; Obama has not yet been able to do so. ....... former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has demonstrated clearly that he's the wrong choice. He's wrong on the issues, from immigration to tax policy to the use of American power to gay rights and beyond. And his shifting positions and willingness to pander have raised questions about who he is and what he stands for. ........ Romney wants to cut taxes, spending and regulations in the hope that the mix of stimulus and austerity will spark growth and reduce the federal deficit. Obama wants to trim spending but raise taxes on high-income Americans, shrinking the deficit without sacrificing investments in the country's productive capacity or curtailing Washington's role in protecting the vulnerable. ....... The centerpiece of Romney's campaign is his plan to cut tax rates 20% below the Bush-era cuts while eliminating enough tax breaks to make up for the loss in revenue, after factoring in economic growth. But the plan lacks credibility, in no small part because Romney has declined to specify how he'd make the numbers work. The risk is that his tax reform will drive up costs for the very middle-income Americans he says he wants to protect, who are the biggest beneficiaries of those tax breaks. ...... it's irresponsible to seek a deep, permanent tax cut when the government is deeply in the red. And Romney would exacerbate the situation by spending extravagantly on defense even as the last of the Bush-era wars ends. His main proposal for reducing the deficit is to cap federal spending at 20% of the economy. With Social Security and Medicare commitments growing in tandem with the rising population of retirees, however, such a cap would inevitably force draconian cuts in federal programs that are vital to productivity, such as higher education, transportation and research. ......... It's hard to analyze the effect of Romney's plans because he's left so many blanks to be filled in after the election. ...... he wants to replace the health care and financial regulatory reforms enacted in 2010, but he won't say with what exactly. He's also advocated rolling back the clock on clean energy, overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving women's reproductive rights at the mercy of state legislators and abandoning efforts to help distressed borrowers keep their homes. And he has sounded bellicose on foreign policy, particularly in regard to the complex challenges posed by Iran, Russia and China, with which he appears determined to start a trade war. ......... The most troubling aspect of Romney's candidacy is that we still don't know what his principles are. Is he the relatively moderate Republican who was governor of Massachusetts, the "severely conservative" one on display in the GOP primaries or the more reasonable-sounding fellow who reappeared at the presidential debates? His modulating positions on his own tax plan, health care reform, financial regulation, Medicare, immigration and the national safety net add to the impression that the only thing he really stands for is his own election. ...... Obama's recalls the successful formula of the 1990s, when the government raised taxes and slowed spending to close the deficit. The alternative offered by Romney would neglect the country's infrastructure and human resources for the sake of yet another tax cut and a larger defense budget than even the Pentagon is seeking.