Category Archives: The Nation

Reuters finds Obama leading in early voting

Or rather, he’s leading in what early voter are telling pollsters, so take that big grain of salt:

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are neck and neck in opinion polls, but there is one area in which the incumbent appears to have a big advantage: those who have already cast their ballots.

Obama leads Romney by 59 percent to 31 percent among early voters, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled in recent weeks.

The sample size of early voters is relatively small, but the Democrat’s margin is still well above the poll’s credibility interval – a measurement of polls’ accuracy – of 10 percentage points. (full graphic: bit.ly/RmeEen)

With the November 6 election just more than three weeks away, 7 percent of those surveyed said they had already voted either in person or by mail (full graphic: bit.ly/SWm5YR).

The online poll is another sign that early voting is likely to play a bigger role this year than in 2008, when roughly one in three voters cast a ballot before Election Day. Voting is already under way in some form in at least 40 states…

On a side note, I don’t care how popular it is, I still don’t hold with this early voting nonsense.

Thoughts on the veep debate?

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Celeste Headlee of “The Takeaway” reTweeted the above photo from tonight’s debate with the comment, “Sums it all up.” Here are my Tweets from the debate. All are by me, except where you see another Twitter handle:

Ryan’s fighting his corner, but I can’t shake the impression that he looks and sounds like such a kid next to Biden. Like student gov’t…
Warren Bolton ‏@BoltonWarren Ryan speaks of Romney’s personal experiences: Biden counters with his own. The difference in having lived longer.
Paul Begala ‏@PaulBegala Biden is killing Ryan on Medicare and Social Security. Ryan is arguing ideology, Biden arguing facts.
Gosh, I’d like to see these guys debate like grownups. For a change…
If this were kindergarten, they’d both be doing timeout in separate corners by now…
Levi Henry ‏@levihenry I never would have thought that Joe Biden’s debating ability would be what gave @BarackObama another term. That could be the case tonight.
Biden channeled Billy Ray Valentine re Afghanistan: I been all over that place, baby…

As you see, I didn’t have nearly as much to say as I usually do during these things. Guess I wasn’t very inspired. I was interested at first, and impressed at how well Biden was doing in his mission to make up for Obama’s lackluster performance. But eventually I got fed up with the behavior, on the parts of both men, that no elementary school teacher would allow in her classroom. Your thoughts?

Follow the bouncing polls

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Slatest reports contradictory poll results following Mitt Romney’s big debate win last week:

A TALE OF TWO POLLS: In the wake of Mitt Romney’s historic debate performance last week, the GOP challenger has leapfrogged President Obama and now leads the incumbent among likely voters with less than a month to go until the election. Unless, of course, he hasn’t, and his post-debate bounce has since evaporated. Those were the two very different narratives suggested by a pair of polls out Monday.

GOOD NEWS, MITT: The Pew Research Poll released the results of its latest polling this afternoon—the first major survey taken entirely after last Wednesday’s debate—that showed Romney and Obama knotted at 46 apiece among registered voters, and the Republican out in front 49 percent to 45 among likely voters. That’s quite a change from last month’s survey, when Obama led 51-42 among registered voters and 51-43 among likely voters.

GOOD NEWS, BARACK: Gallup, meanwhile, offered a different snapshot of the state of the race for the White House. The polling outfit’s latest seven-day rolling average—which included polling conducted through Sunday—shows the president out in front by 5 points, 50-45, among registered voters. That figure was particularly noteworthy because Obama had seen a pre-debate lead of 4 points shrink to 3 points by Saturday, before jumping back up to 5 points once Sunday’s results were factored in…

Words from another time, another universe

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Back in the days of typewriters, dictionaries were a great obstacle to my developing what my detractors call “time-management skills.” I couldn’t look up one word without running across another that fascinated me, which in turn caused me to look up another, then three more, and one and on, each word opening the floodgates of dopamine in my brain as I utterly forgot what I had set out to do.

The Web is a dictionary taken to the nth power.

Today, I stuck up for our Founders’ vision of a republic rather than a democracy, which caused Bud to say fine, if that’s what you want, then let’s return to precisely their vision. That caused me to say that I was for repealing the 17th Amendment. Then, when I went for a link to explain to readers which amendment that was, I started reading about the debate at the time over this “reform.” I saw that William Jennings Bryan (you know, the guy Clarence Darrow took apart at the Monkey Trial) was for the change, and Elihu Root opposed it. Thinking Mr. Root was perhaps a man after my own mind, I went and looked him up.

And I read on Wikipedia this excerpt from a letter he wrote to The New York Times in 1910, while serving as a U.S. senator from New York:

It is said that a very large part of any income tax under the amendment would be paid by citizens of New York….

Elihu Root

The reason why the citizens of New York will pay so large a part of the tax is New York City is the chief financial and commercial centre of a great country with vast resources and industrial activity. For many years Americans engaged in developing the wealth of all parts of the country have been going to New York to secure capital and market their securities and to buy their supplies. Thousands of men who have amassed fortunes in all sorts of enterprises in other states have gone to New York to live because they like the life of the city or because their distant enterprises require representation at the financial centre. The incomes of New York are in a great measure derived from the country at large. A continual stream of wealth sets toward the great city from the mines and manufactories and railroads outside of New York.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Imagine that. A serving politician who actually wrote not only in favor of an income tax when there wasn’t one, but told his own constituents why they should shoulder a particularly large portion of that burden. Now there’s a man of principle for you.

You will ask now whether he was re-elected. Well, he didn’t run again.

But it’s not like he retired. He went on to serve in several prominent capacities. In 1912, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for “his work to bring nations together through arbitration and cooperation.” Nevertheless, he would later oppose Woodrow Wilson’s initial position of neutrality as WWI broke out. He believed German militarism must be opposed.

He was a reluctant candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1916. Charles Evans Hughes won the nomination, and went on to lose to Wilson.

I think I might have voted for Root, given the chance.

Instant polls give the debate to Romney

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Poll results compiled by Nate Silver show the viewing public pretty much agreeing with the commentators who gave last night’s debate decision to Romney:

Instant-reaction polls conducted by CNN and CBS News suggest that Mitt Romney was the winner of the first presidential debate.

A CNN poll of debate-watchers found Mr. Romney very clearly ahead, with 67 percent of registered voters saying he won the debate, against just 25 percent for President Obama.

A CBS News poll of undecided voters who watched the debate found 46 percent siding with Mr. Romney, 22 percent for Mr. Obama and 32 percent saying it was a tie.

Google, which is experimenting with online surveys, found 38.9 percent of respondents saying they thought Mr. Obama performed better in a poll it conducted during the debate, against 35.5 percent for Mr. Romney and 25.6 percent who said it was a draw. But a second poll they conducted after the debate found 47.8 percent of respondents giving Mr. Romney the advantage, against 25.4 percent for Mr. Obama…

I still haven’t seen enough of the debate itself to know what I think. But from what I’m hearing, I’d have to actually watch it, which would be unusual for me. A lot of the advantage given to Romney sounds like it was based on visual impressions. Usually, I listening while Tweeting and blogging. Last night, rehearsal prevented me from doing anything with it at all…

Swing state? In which universe do we find THAT South Carolina?

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A colleague brought to my attention this electoral college map, supposedly based on “current projections,” over at The Wall Street Journal.

In which universe, I wonder, is South Carolina a “swing state”?

What did you think of the debate?

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For my part, I missed it. Rehearsal.

But I recorded it, and hope to watch it tomorrow. (Actually, I’m watching the first few minutes now. It certainly starts out civilly enough…)

But in the meantime, I thought I’d provide a place for a discussion. What did y’all think?

Guess what? Todd Akin could get elected (and SC’s Donehue Direct is playing a role in that)

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Slatest devoted plenty of virtual ink this morning to indications that the-late-and-unlamented Todd Akin campaign is alive again (cue the “Young Frankenstein” clip”):

FOR REAL THIS TIME: After COB today, Todd Akin’s name is more or less set in stone on the Missouri ballot and will remain there even in the event of his death. But what only a month ago appeared to turn into an unwinnable Senate race for Republicans, now looks likely to go down to the wire.

THE NUMBERS: The latest polling from the Show Me State is about two weeks old, so there is no clear picture of the state of the race. But the last two major surveys (taken the last week of August and the second week of September, respectively) show Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill with less-than-comfortable leads of 1 percent and 6 percent respectively.

AND THAT WAS BEFORE: A handful of GOP heavyweights jumped back aboard the Akin train. Mike Huckabee is sticking with Akin. Phyllis Schlafly is doing a bus tour for him. The Senate Conservatives Fund, headed by Sen. Jim DeMint, is seeking support from its donors to help Akin. And yesterday, Newt Gingrich went to Missouri to headline a fund-raiser for him. “What’s the moral case for not backing the Republican nominee picked by the people of Missouri?” Gingrich said at the $500-a-plate event…

Now, I’ll add something to that. As you read here earlier, Wesley Donehue was brought on After the Fall to raise money for Akin, a fact that Wesley’s been touting in promotional materials for Donehue Direct (see the image below from an eblast).

I checked this morning, and he says the effort has raised $700,000 and counting.

Yep, Voter ID is a waste, and has been from the very beginning

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Have to agree, in part, with this release from Lindsey Graham and Trey Gowdy:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and U.S. Congressman Trey Gowdy (SC-4) today sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting documents pertaining to the Department of Justice’s opposition to South Carolina’s Voter ID law.

Graham and Gowdy expressed concerns that an approval recommendation by career Voting Section experts was ignored and overruled by Obama appointees at the Justice Department…

Oh, it’s a waste all right — the whole mess. Starting with the GOP’s completely unnecessary imposition of this “solution” to a nonexistent “problem,” and ending with Democrats’ hyperventilating over it. As I’ve said over and over again for years, a huge waste all around — and we all know that it’s about each party trying to gain or protect every ounce of leverage it can get at the ballot box. Which has an unbecoming intensity in this very close election.

But gentlemen, as much as one might find in “waste” on both sides — and if the DOJ leadership ignored its own staff recommendation, that does raise one’s eyebrows — the truth is that your own side started this unnecessary fight.

Ann Romney to critics: ‘Stop it. This is hard.’

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And she’s saying that to the Republicans who are getting on her husband’s case, according to Slatest:

During an interview with Radio Iowa last night, Ann Romney had a message for the growing ranks of Republicans who have criticized her husband in recent days.

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

I find myself wondering whether that was spontaneous on her part — which it could well be — or whether someone in the campaign decided, Let’s have Ann say this. Being a woman and being the spouse and not the candidate, she can get away with it — whereas Mitt would be labeled a whiner.

I could see someone in the campaign thinking that, but I prefer to think it was spontaneous.

Beyond that, I have two reactions:

Yes, indeed. One reason we don’t have more (and better) candidates for public office is that the audience is so cruel and unforgiving, and obsesses over the tiniest slip-up. It isn’t fair, and if you’re in the middle of it all, you do sort of wish the facile critics would have the guts to see what it’s like sometime to be in there trying your heart out.
On the other hand, I’m cognizant of exactly why these GOP critics are getting on her husband’s case, and that makes me think, Yeah, you’re right: It IS hard. Especially for certain people, apparently…

Mitt Romney, peering deep into the abyss

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How bad has the past week been for Romney, between the Libya remarks and the “47 percent” video? Bad enough that this bit from The Onion is just barely funny:

DALLAS—With his campaign still reeling from a series of miscues, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney asked a group of top advisers Wednesday whether it would be worth going after Obama by questioning the nation of his birth. “What about that whole deal with his birth certificate, or him being born in Kenya or wherever—you think that might stick?” said Romney, adding he was “just spitballing here.” “Also, wasn’t he connected to that terrorist guy, what’s-his-name? Ayers? Bill Ayers? That might have legs, right? Let’s look into that.” After agreeing that the situations should be investigated, Romney and his aides then reportedly sat in silence for 10 whole minutes.

And somewhere out there, some second-guessing Republicans are thinking, “The Donald is tanned, rested and ready…”

Meanwhile, over in a quarter where none of this is funny, one WSJ columnist is lecturing the nominee that his loyalty should be to the country, not his hapless campaign staff, and Karl Rove is saying yes, the situation is bad, but it’s not over — after all, Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan at this point in 1980.

Speaking of Reagan, Peggy Noonan is writing that it’s “Time for an Intervention:”

What should Mitt Romney do now? He should peer deep into the abyss. He should look straight into the heart of darkness where lies a Republican defeat in a year the Republican presidential candidate almost couldn’t lose. He should imagine what it will mean for the country, for a great political philosophy, conservatism, for his party and, last, for himself. He must look down unblinkingly.

And then he needs to snap out of it, and move…

The central problem revealed by the tape is Romney’s theory of the 2012 election. It is that a high percentage of the electorate receives government checks and therefore won’t vote for him, another high percentage is supplying the tax revenues and will vote for him, and almost half the people don’t pay taxes and presumably won’t vote for him.

My goodness, that’s a lot of people who won’t vote for you. You wonder how he gets up in the morning.

This is not how big leaders talk, it’s how shallow campaign operatives talk: They slice and dice the electorate like that, they see everything as determined by this interest or that. They’re usually young enough and dumb enough that nobody holds it against them, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know much about America.

We are a big, complicated nation. And we are human beings. We are people. We have souls. We are complex. We are not data points. Many things go into our decisions and our political affiliations.

You have to be sophisticated to know that. And if you’re operating at the top of national politics, you’re supposed to be sophisticated…

And this is what Mitt Romney is hearing from what should be his cheering section.

A dangerously simplistic view of foreign affairs

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Just got a very strange release, considering that it comes from a state senator (albeit one with national ambitions):

BEAUFORT, S.C. – South Carolina State Senator Tom Davis today released the following statement regarding the vote tomorrow in the United States Senate on Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment to end U.S. aid to Pakistan, Egypt and Libya, pending the satisfaction of certain conditions.

“Today I call on South Carolina’s senators, Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, to cast their vote in support of Sen. Paul’s amendment,” Davis said. “If these countries want to be our allies and receive our money, then they should act like it.”

“The conditions to receiving foreign aid set forth in Sen. Paul’s amendment are reasonable: the Libyan police must hand over to U.S. officials the suspects in the recent attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi; the Egyptian government must vow to protect our embassy; and the Pakistani government must release from custody Dr. Shakil Afridi, a man who risked his life to provide us with information that confirmed the location of Osama bin Laden.

“Simply put, bad behavior should not be rewarded. America currently gives approximately $4 billion a year to Pakistan, Libya and Egypt, and all we get in return is disrespect and violence. Sen. Paul put it exactly right: ‘American taxpayer dollars should not go to Libya until the murderers are delivered to justice. Nor should they go to Egypt until the Egyptians prove that they are willing and able to protect our embassy. Finally, not one more penny of American taxpayer dollars should go to Pakistan until the doctor who helped us get bin Laden is freed.’”

Really? That’s your view of it? That “all we get in return is disrespect and violence”? Do you really suppose that we have close ties to Pakistan just because Pakistan wants it? We have that relationship because, despite all the godawful aggravation we get out of the relationship, we need it. As maddening as the many factions of that nation, many of them openly hostile, can be, that’s a door we need propped open, at least a little. Just whom are punishing if we cut off that relationship entirely? Is that what it’s actually about to you — the lousy $4 billion?

And you’re going to blame the new, Libyan government, a thing largely of our creation, for what some bad actors — people they have arrested — did? Do we so little value the fact that we have a friendly regime there after more than a generation of Gaddafi (a cause to which ambassador Stevens devoted the end of his life) that we’ll just throw it away because Sen. Paul is peeved and wants to save the money?

And Egypt — is it your plan to say, now that Mubarak is gone, we don’t want to be close to you anymore, Egypt? Is that our response to the Arab Spring? Sure, it’s problematic the role the Muslim Brotherhood is playing, but isn’t that a reason to hold the new regime closer, rather than pushing it away? Do you want to return to the days of Nasser? You sure about that?

Of all of these, the one I’d like to get tough with is Pakistan, because I’ve had it with their playing footsie with terrorists. But I know that’s an emotional, rather than a coldly rational, response. And that adolescent emotional urge on my part was quite satisfied for the time being by the raid on Abbottabad, and the many strikes in the lawless northwest before that.

This isn’t a foreign policy proposal; it’s domestic posturing. And I’m sorry to see my friend Tom Davis reaching outside the purview of his office to engage in it.

Is Mitt Romney a bad CEO? No, says this writer

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Over at Bloomberg Businessweek, Joshua Green insists that the chaos in Mitt Romney’s campaign does NOT mean that he’s a bad CEO:

Romney’s problem is not that he’s brought too little executive rigor to the job of running for president. It’s that he’s brought too much. He’s behaved too much like a businessman (or a consultant) and not enough like a politician. His campaign has all the hallmarks of being run by someone looking only at the numbers, someone who lacks a true politician’s appreciation for the other dimensions of a race—a feel for the electorate, a convincing long-term plan for the country. Were he forced to defend himself before a board of directors, Romney would actually have a pretty solid case for doing what he has done….

… Romney has scrupulously avoided committing to anything that is remotely unpopular, such as naming which tax loopholes he’d close to pay for his agenda. That is to say, he is doing just about everything a close reading of the polls says you should do, and he’s trying hard not to do anything the polls say you shouldn’t do. If a team of Bain consultants were hustled in to pore over the data and devise a strategy, I doubt they would have devised a meaningfully different campaign.

The problem is that politics is about much more than a tactical, short-term reading of the numbers. Candidate skills matter, and the audience in a presidential election is much more variegated than a board of directors. There isn’t much, frankly, that a stiff guy can do to make himself warm and approachable. (Earth tones, anyone?) The glaring weaknesses in Romney’s campaign—the fuzzy details, the inability to convincingly articulate plan for growth, and above all the weird tics and gaffes—are not ones that a businessman’s skills can rectify.

In other words, he’s more a bad politician than a bad CEO. We are left to conclude what we like about what sort of president he would be.

Something to consider, for all those who still think the silly phrase “run government like a business” makes sense.

What Mitt Romney thinks of Obama supporters

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The WashPost brings my attention to the above video, which was put out by Mother Jones (and of course, if it were just Mother Jones, I wouldn’t be paying as much attention — but the Post seems to regard it as legit, so…) From the Post report:

Bits and pieces of a private fundraiser held by Mitt Romney have been leaked to Mother Jones magazine, exposing some blunt talk from the Republican candidate on voters, his campaign and American society.

In one video, Romney argues that it’s not “my job” to win over the 47 percent of voters committed to President Obama, because they are “dependent on government” and he will “never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

What Romney says in the video will perhaps endear him to some of the base that have thus far been cold to him, because that’s exactly what they think of Obama voters.

But personally, I would have thought Mr. Romney had a somewhat more respectful, and open-minded, attitude toward this nearly half of the American electorate. It’s a bit disturbing to think that, if elected, he’d come into office holding 47 percent of Americans in contempt to this degree.

The demonstrators chanted, ‘Free Libya, Terrorists Out’

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Perhaps I’m the last one to know this — other people regularly consume news sources that I don’t often see — but in case there are others who also missed it, I pass on this perspective on what happened in the streets of Libya last week:

Sept. 11 is now a date that signifies a national tragedy for Libya as well as the United States. The attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, has upset the delicate political transition from dictatorship to democracy that was unfolding here. It also has obscured parliament’s prudent selection Wednesday of Mustafa Abushagour—a moderate Islamist and respected technocrat—as prime minister. Yet spontaneous street demonstrations throughout the week denouncing the attack and seeking to pressure the government to act against its perpetrators suggest that Libyans are determined to build an inclusive society, free from fear…

On Wednesday night in Tree Square in Benghazi, we witnessed crowds expressing heartfelt disappointment, shouting slogans like, “Free Libya, terrorists out!”…

Based on our dozens of interviews in Benghazi, most Libyans are appalled by the consulate attack. One female medical student at a Benghazi demonstration captured the mood: “The Americans are guests in our country and Islam requires us to treat them well.”

According to a recent Gallup poll, Libyans hold a more favorable attitude toward Americans than they do even toward Canadians. As days have passed since the attack, Libyan popular condemnation has increased. A meeting took place on Thursday evening at the Shbelia Hotel to coordinate citizen action against the militants…

That’s not the whole story, of course. The authors of that oped piece also witnessed anti-American demonstrations. But from their perspective, the opposite attitude is more common.

Just FYI in case you missed it…

Shouldn’t shame and dishonor be enough?

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Just got this from Joe Wilson re the bill that outlaws falsely claiming military distinctions:

Wilson stated, “Our brave men and women who have willingly sacrificed their lives to protect and serve our country deserve our upmost respect, honor, and gratitude. The passage of today’s bill further protects the dignity of our Armed Forces. Individuals who dishonestly claim to have dedicated their lives to ensure the American people’s safety for their own personal gain deserve punishment. Their actions constitute criminal fraud and they should be prosecuted accordingly. As a proud original cosponsor of this legislation, I urge the Senate to take immediate action and look forward to the President signing this bill into law.”

But I can’t help thinking, why do we need such a law?

For the law to be applied, someone would have to get caught lying about military service, right? So… isn’t the shame and humiliation of having been caught trying to make yourself out to be a hero, and the real-life damage it would do to your reputation, enough?

Seems to me that the court of public opinion is pretty good at heavily punishing offenders on this score.

My Dad, the retired Navy captain, collects ballcaps, and has so many he’s constantly giving them away. A couple he’s given me tout the Navy or the Marine Corps. I like the caps, but don’t wear them because I would be mortified to have someone think I was letting on to be something I am not.

Maybe not everyone sees things that way. But I would think that anyone who valued military service enough to want a connection with it so badly as to lie about it would suffer considerably on being discovered. Don’t you think?

And why is it that sometimes it’s the limited-government types who are most eager to say, “There oughta be a law…”?

‘So remember, guys: Don’t use your phones…’

This is an occasion for national unity, not sniping

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This would be a good moment to remember the thing about partisan politics stopping at the water’s edge.

I got a release from Lindsey Graham last night — I’m just now getting to it in my email — that quoted the senator as saying the following:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican voice on foreign policy, launched a sharp attack against the Obama administration on Wednesday, saying the president’s lack of leadership would “lead to an explosion in the Middle East.” … The American disengagement, lack of leadership, and leading from behind is leading to uncertainty and doubt on all fronts. … There is no substitute for leadership by the United States and every group within the region is uncertain about who we are and what we believe.”

The thing is, when I watched the accompanying video, for the first few minutes I didn’t hear that sort of tone. Instead, the senator said the sorts of things I would expect a politician who cares about foreign policy to say. He talked about how this should not be allowed to weaken our strong ties to the new democratic leadership of Libya. He stressed that the attack — whether calculated or spontaneous — was the work of a tiny minority who do not reflect our relationship with that country.

He even expressed agreement with what Secretary of State Clinton had to say. And I like that, even though part of it may be the longtime mutual admiration society that Hillary and Lindsey have going.

Then, toward the end, he launched into the GOP talking points about the administration’s alleged failures. About the only thing I might agree with him on is that I wish we were acting more effectively to keep Assad from killing his own people in Syria.

But in his eagerness to criticize, the senator implied, if he did not exactly say, two things he should know are not true:

That somehow the mess of the last couple of days is the administration’s fault.
That the way forward in light of the ongoing “Arab Spring” movement is simpler and clearer than it is.

Given his respectful ties to some of the key people in the administration’s national security team, and the many areas of agreement he has with them, I would think Senator Graham would be hesitant to throw out the people he knows in favor of the uncertainties Romney would bring.

But that’s me engaging in wishful thinking, I guess. Just because Sen. Graham is occasionally an iconoclast, I like to tell myself he can be that all the time. Obviously, I’m not in charge of his re-election in two years…

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