One of the many reasons that I quit the local blog I used to work for is that people would yell at me for saying Obama had New York State wrapped up in the 2008 general; they’d say “nothing’s wrapped up if people don’t put up lawn signs and make calls!” I’m all for getting out the vote, but I that’s bullshit, Obama polled 15-30 points ahead the entire time and there was no way he was going to lose.
More generally, I hate “WE CAN’T BE OVERCONFIDENT!” In this presidential race, particularly, Romney’s ability to raise money is likely tied to the perception that he has a chance to win. So we need to push the line that he’s an out-of-touch, dog-torturing freak with no chance to win. So fuck this:
Mitt Romney is poised to have the best months ever in his political career. If he plays his hand well, and it’s a fairly easy hand to play, he will gain tremendous momentum in the race and gain the upper hand in the perception of who will win— which is often, pollsters will tell you, a leading indicator of who will win.
ThresherK
Has Mitt strapped the dog onto the roof for trips to NJ and CA for late October yet?
The WaPo was “insider savvy” enough to fall for that crap from Shrub. I don’t know if I expect them to know better this time.
Handy
There has to be a real interesting horse race or the M$M will get no ratings.
Polls are like a parlor trick. You can massage the results by asking the questions a certain way or in a certain order. They will say “look at the trend lines across many polls and discard the outlying numbers” but that is just combining many parlor tricks into a show.
That’s not to say all polls are complete BS but it is not easy to know which are which.
Hunter Gathers
Until I see something that makes it look like Mittens is going to do better than Walnuts with Latino voters, I’m not going to believe anybody who tells me that this election is going to be close. But then again, since the only non-white people the MSM seems to have any contact with tends to be their waiters, housekeepers and cab drivers, the fact that Latinos are completely invisible politically (save for conservative Cubans) isn’t that much of a surprise.
Dave
That article is hilarious. You think simple dignity would keep you from putting your name on such overt knob-slobbering, but you go to election coverage with the press you have, not the press you want…
Mike Goetz
Who in god’s name wrote that stroke job? Gag me with a spoon.
Just look at any electoral map. Romney is not just an underdog, but a massive, near-impossible underdog. It’s so bad that people are trying to pretend that Pennsylvania is a toss up, just to keep people interested.
Linnaeus
I suspect the Bush years have a lot to do with the attitude that you describe. This country elected Bush twice – or at least once even after he’d demonstrated how bad he was.
Ben Cisco
They make a ton from campaign ads; therefore they have to have a horserace.
Even if they have to invent one.
ice weasel
Keep in mind what is at stake here. The mainstream media could cash in on hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising. All they have to do is try to keep the punters interested. And of course, it also keeps the various candidates engaged, and spending. This is the once every four years media xmas season and, with SuperPac money flowing through the streets, it’s the best xmas ever. Expect the media to say anything to grab those dollars. Anything. They don’t give a shit who wins (well, most of them don’t). They just want their cut.
Mike Goetz
@Hunter Gathers:
You’ve hit on something here. The media is hugely dominated by whites. Obama is disapproved of by a majority of whites and will lose whites in the upcoming election. That is the prespective through which the media is viewing the political situation.
Primigenius
If the Republicans exhumed Warren Harding and ran him in place of Mitt, he’d be “within striking distance of pulling off a massive upset” by Halloween. You gotta sell ads, and the horse race is the most effective way to keep people tuning in.
rlrr
@Mike Goetz:
Consider: All Obama has to do is win the the states John Kerry won plus one more.
gaz
@ThresherK:
You absolutely silly person! Don’t you know that Willard has updated his transportation since then?
The dog goes in to one of the overhead bins on his private jet.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I refuse to click on the link. Is that Cilizza? Another font of conventional Villager pablum.
As said above, all these people want is a horse race and they’ll spin any news to conform to that world view.
And the (com)Post wonders why it loses money hand over fist? I’ll never give em a dime of my money.
amk
I knew it. Obama pissed off wapo by not mentioning it in his RS interview.
Joking aside, how much more blatantly can the bw root for miitbot ?
gaz
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: At least we know where all of the missing Village Idiots ended up.
C
“Again, like the previous question, the upside is all with Romney. He is losing now in most polls despite having upside-down favorables. When they turn the right way for him, polls will start to show him ahead.”
This doesn’t even begin to make sense.
deep
It’s still the tendency of the MSM to treat the election like a sporting event so they can drive up viewership.
Steve
Doesn’t getting people out to vote for Obama have a lot to do with winning Congress and the downticket races? I mean, sure, you could TRY to get people excited about those races on their own merits, but 2010 is a pretty good example of what happens when Obama isn’t actually on the ticket. People like the President so we might as well take advantage of those coattails.
Alexandra
Carter Eskew: Chief Strategist for the Gore 2000 presidential campaign.
SatanicPanic
OMG why did I read this crap? I got as far as #2:
When less people start hating Romney, he will go up in the polls! I get paid to write this!
gaz
@Steve: If any firebagger tells me they are not voting this november I plan to run them down with my car.
Napoleon
@rlrr:
Isn’t that all John Kerry needed to do? How did that work out?
This is going to be a very close election.
beltane
@SatanicPanic: I seem to remember the late David Broder saying the same thing about Bush’s approval numbers in 2006, and how they had no place to go but up which meant the Republicans were guaranteed to hold Congress.
Steve
@gaz: Well, it’s not really about the political activists, just as 2010 wasn’t actually about disaffected liberals failing to turn out. The issue is casual voters, who are far more numerous than firebaggers.
butler
@C: It does make sense, you just have to buy into the assumption that Mitt will eventually not have such negative likability. Which is a hell of an assumption to make, but not totally impossible. Kind of like saying that a desert will grow corn as soon as it starts getting steady rainfall.
SatanicPanic
@C: Am I wrong in reading this to mean that the author is saying that it’s odd that someone with more people disliking than liking him is losing in the polls? He is losing now in most polls despite having upside-down favorables
Stillwater
Romney’s perceptability is high right now.
Is there data on this?
Yes. People perceive him as more electable.
So, his electability numbers are rising?
They are. As a result of his improved perceptability.
Surly Duff
At first I assumed that it must be an article by Jennifer Rubin. Guess I was wrong, but it still does not change the fact that this was a pointless article with absolutely no support for any assertion. When you write something like this…
…you should not be taken seriously. “Romney won’t be behind when his polling numbers get above Obama’s” it the political equivalent of a baseball announcer stating “The batter really wants to get on base or he will never score.” It’s Tim McCarver-esque polticial analysis.
Redshift
@C: Yeah, considering that every indication we’ve seen so far is that the more people see of Romney, the less they like him, talking about “when” his favorable/unfavorable reverses is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “la-la-la I can’t hear you!”
Mike Goetz
@Alexandra:
He’s a strategist and consultant, and if you read the article it boils down to: only strategists and consultants can pull out a win for Obama. Because only strategists and consultants can blunt the huge Romney surge that is nowhere actually in evidence.
Utterly nauseating.
Nemesis
Above all, above actually devoting a modicum of effort to informing the public, the demon box networks are corporate entities that – you’ve heard this one before ad nauseum – have but one responsibility, which is to the shareholders.
tv entertains. Endless hours of worthless political coverage is the norm. Sell ad time and, as mentioned above, rake in the campaign ad dollars if the race can be construed as “close”. Truth, facts, logic be damned cause they dont pay da bills.
Jay C
@ThresherK:
Dude, where have you been for the last twenty years? Today’s WaPo is basically a Republican house organ – and a Wurlitzer at that, given its cachet as THE “Washington Insider” paper – and you know that their election coverage will, Fox-News style, be “fair and balanced” right up til Obama’s blowout victory in November. After which, they will seamlessly shift into excuse-mongering mode and “lame duck” sniping til the next election – blather, rinse, repeat….
Fr33d0m
Tells you all you need to know.
amk
The bright side is how many people read this fucker ? About 100?
gaz
@Steve: There should be no such thing as a casual voter in a democracy.
These people need to take a page from how the Mexicans do shit
Gromit
Am I the only one who can’t make heads or tails of what that Eskew guy is writing?
In particular:
Isn’t he losing in the polls BECAUSE of “upside-down favorables”? Or does that not mean what I think it means?
And doesn’t the entire mass of words boil down to “Romney will really start to turn things around if he can get voters to stop hating him”?
SatanicPanic
@beltane: I like this logic and am going to be very happy when my baseball team (San Diego Padres, currently in last place) win the World Series.
gaz
@Gromit: yes.
SATSQ =)
cheers
butler
No they won’t. Most good pollsters would say no such thing, because its (at best) a co-linear relationship impossible to disentangle from much stronger factors like the economy, partisanship and incumbency.
Despite the pronouncements of our goldfish media, there isn’t a lot of suspense here. Yes, Romney is going gain in the polls between now and November, mostly as a result of Republicans rallying around him and some independents being introduced to him and heading to his side. He’ll poll relatively close to Obama for months. 60+ million Americans are going to pull the lever for him. He’s going to win at least 200 EVs.
But none of these things mean he’ll necessarily win.
Culture of Truth
I read it more as WHEN voters stop hating him, which they must do. They simply must!
Villago Delenda Est
WE.MUST.PRETEND.THERE.IS.A.HORSE.RACE, because we have to keep our phoney-baloney jobs!
Litlebritdifrnt
@butler:
It is funny listening to the resigned radio hosts, Ingrahm, Limbaugh, Hannity. They all hate Romney, their listeners hate Romney. There were lots and lots of callers who said that if Romney was the eventual nominee, then they would just not vote. I remember Ingrahm’s quote “really? So you are going to nominate the guy who lost to the guy who lost the presidency really?” Hannity can barely talk because he has Newt’s dick so far down his throat. Limbaugh is now trying to talk all his listeners back from the edge of the cliff that he sent them to.
I am enjoying this immensely. I’d better stock up on popcorn, especially seeing as Eric son of Eric is now going after Mitch the Turtle.
butler
@gaz: If only. Unfortunately its the casual voters who usually decide things.
Steve
@gaz: Maybe election day should be a holiday, too. This election has to be won in the world as it is, not the world as it ought to be.
John McCain
this is nothing but good news. Lindsey, stop pulling up your skirt and get back in here with me and Joe! There are brown people to bomb.
Face
Shouldn’t “when” be changed to “if”, given this guy’s history?
kth
How is having to walk back everything he has said the past year an easy hand to play?
Punchy
You can work for a blog? Is there a salary? Bennies? Donuts on Friday? Does Sullivan know about this?
Sly
Writing “Mitt Romney is a while, male, Republican and that will automatically get him fifty million votes,” while the truth, is not sufficiently insider-y to justify being paid to write it. And that justification depends on demonstrating one’s relevance to a politics of, by, and for political consultants.
Cacti
@SatanicPanic:
And all he has to do to make this happen is reverse a career-long trend where the more people know of him, the less they like him.
Truly, an astute observation. Or is it asstoot? I forget.
shortstop
@Gromit:
Yes, apart from the separate, hilarious question of how Romney will improve his favorability (1. ? 2. Romney gets more likable. 3. Polls go up!), I suspect that this person doesn’t know that “despite” is not a synonym for “because of” or “due to.”
shortstop
@kth: See comment 48. White, male, Republican, guaranteed 50 million votes.
Seriously, though, although the electoral result will be lopsided, I do expect the popular vote to be closer than many here are predicting. Closer than any non-insane nation would be able to stomach.
negative 1
@butler: It is when the subtext of the comment is “they look inevitable because we swing our coverage in his direction relentlessly”. They want a horse-race, so they will get a horse-race. This will eventually create “momentum” for someone.
Tractarian
Can you please pass the cyanide pills, Mr. Cole?
mikej
@amk: I believe they claim a readership of 500. *The* 500, of course.
Catsy
This.
Look, there is one inescapable mathematical truth in this election: Mitt Romney has to outperform John McCain. Period. Yes, Obama is going to shed some votes compared to the high-flying inspiration of his 2008 campaign, but those votes aren’t necessarily going to go to Romney and they vanish as statistical noise compared to the double digit numbers by which Romney and the GOP are losing women and minorities.
Do you see Romney doing better than McCain with Latino voters? With women? Or even with his own base?
Good grief. Romney will be lucky to equal McCain’s 2008 performance.
Take a look over the electoral map. Count the EV. Figure out which 2008 states of Obama’s Romney needs to flip in order to win. Now look at their polling and think about what it would take to do that solely with white males considering how increasingly underwater Romney is with women and minorities.
Think about it.
We still need to fight as if it’s going to be close. But it’s not. Don’t get complacent, but don’t waste energy fretting either.
danimal
@SatanicPanic: I’ve been a Padre fan all my life, and this year’s team has the potential to be the worst of them all. Which means that they have the most upside of all the baseball teams.
I’m sure the Yankees are quaking in their cleats, just as Obama must be in a blind panic over RMoney’s unpopularity.
Where do I apply to be a consultant/pundit? I’m starting to make pundit-sense. Someone has to replace Shrum, after all.
Culture of Truth
He is losing now in most polls despite having upside-down favorables.
And to think I used to scoff when old cranks said our educational system was failing.
Tractarian
By the way, it’s not crazy to think Romney will benefit in horse-race polls from having sealed his nomination. But that already happened. Romney had his surge, as expected. A Mitt surge of a few percentage points is clearly visible in all poll aggregators, like Pollster, RealClear Politics, etc.
The thing is, the surge is done, and it didn’t last very long. All the aggregators now show Obama moving back into a 3-4 point national lead.
So apparently Carter “My Viewpoint Is Seriously” Eskew has been asleep the past couple of weeks.
ploeg
Local people say things like that, of course, because it drives up local turnout, helps local Democrats win close local races, and helps you elect better Democrats vs. the blue-dog variety. And it might not help the Electoral College count to bump up the popular vote, but it doesn’t hurt, and it does show the strength of your coalition. So it would always be wise to RUN UP THE SCORE.
willard
@C: Sure, it makes perfect sense. As soon as Mitt stops reminding everyone of their out of touch asshole boss, and republicans attract women and minorities, he will win.
So, yeah … I’m going to need you to come in to work on Sunday.
Tom Q
Just a refresher for those who weren’t around in 1996: right after the Republican convention, Dole got slightly closer to Clinton in the pills, as honest pollsters will tell you ALWAYS happens after the convention. Timmy Russert was on the air breathlessly telling us the race was going to get closer and closer from there on, and we’d be up till the wee hours on electon night.
Plus ca change…
Jay C
Cheap predictions for the upcoming election coverage:
– The Villager media coverage will be as biased and disgusting as expected right up until the Republican Convention in August.
– The RNC in Tampa will most likely devolve into an shrill Orwellian hate-fest which Romney and his team will diligently and studiously ignore in favor of “moderate” pablum.
– The VM will dutifully trumpet each and every “uptick” for Mitt and the GOP, however miniscule, until the Obama campaign finally launches in earnest, and the logical dissonance of a major-party candidate having to run away from his party’s [sick and bigoted] platform rather than on it finally kicks in.
– After this, unless Romney can demonstrate a continued and credible lead in polls and favorability (which, despite The Village’s wet-dreams, I don’t think he will be able to pull off), the MSM will shift their “horse-race” attention to downticket races, and deflect the narrative to some other shiny object.
Bonus cheap prediction: I still think the real bellwether for the election is going to be the Wisconsin recall election on June 5. Scott Walker’s fate, I think, will presage the GE dynamic. Despite the MSM’s likely attempts to spin the story for the GOP.
Culture of Truth
Speaking of directing energy vs. fretting, here is my suggestion: Treat the swing states in pseudo-panic mode, and recognize there are very few of them. Because Romney could drool on stage or cure cancer, (likewise Obama) and in most states the result is predictable and will be the same.
In my opinion Mitt’s real problem is iwht women. You don’t win men by 5 and lost women by 20 and win an election, from city council to the Presidency.
rlrr
@Tom Q:
Same thing happened after the Republican convention in 2008…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Which would be a first in Mitt’s political career. Considering Mitt already done his best to piss off both the right and the left this seems unlikely to happen.
jheartney
I’m thinking this is like one of those aggressively non-proofread Yglesias posts where he leaves out a “not” and the actual text says the opposite of what he was intending.
Because if it isn’t, then the dude is just out of his mind.
David in NY
I’ve read Obama people saying that the only problem is that Democrats don’t give early enough. If Mitt and the Citizen’s Unionistas can damage him with an early barrage of advertising, and he can’t afford to respond, that 3-4 points may evaporate.
The moral: shell out some money now, not later.
Redshift
On a related topic, I am extremely amused that John McCain can’t stop himself from publicly playing the angry old man on every issue where Democrats are poking Republicans with a stick. Whether it’s “angrily” denying that Romney ever favored “self-deportation,” or how today he “lit into his Democratic colleagues” for saying there’s a war on women, the guy has become a perfect foil.
One downside of being the party of old people is that your leading lights don’t seem to be able to grasp that everything is on video now.
Cacti
@Catsy:
To put it in those terms, Obama could lose Ohio and Florida and still win in a walk.
There is basically no math that gives Romney the Presidency if he doesn’t win both.
Even if everything broke Willard’s way, and he flipped Obama’s biggest battleground wins in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana…
Obama still wins 273 to 265.
Bobby Thomson
To be charitable, this would have been coherent linguistically with the addition of the phrase “by only a slim margin” after “most polls.” And it’s possible that an even dimmer editor shortening the piece for publication chopped something like that.
But I doubt it.
amk
@Jay C: Nailed it.
Patricia Kayden
@Mike Goetz: Obama lost Whites in 2008 as well.
coin operated
Republicans won’t like Mitt, and $300M of Crossroads carpet bombing won’t change that. What it can and will do is stoke the readily abundant hatred of President Blackity-Black, and that dynamic will raise Mitt in the polls.
The WaPo knows this, but can’t really say that in print now, can they?
Culture of Truth
Indeed. One could also observe, “If he plays his hand well, or continues to do what he has been doing…”
Tractarian
@jheartney:
But where would you put the “not”?
I think Eskew just honestly doesn’t know the meaning of the word “despite.” That’s, um, notwithstanding his position as a blogger for one of the world’s foremost newspapers.
So, I’m gonna go with “out of his mind.”
Redshift
@rlrr:
Yep. There are still people (and especially pundits) who think that McCain’s brief flirtation with a close election was caused by the maverickyess of the Palin pick and was kill by the “suspending his campaign” nonsense, rather than just the beginning and end of a normal post-convention bump.
SatanicPanic
@danimal: You’re getting it. How’s this one? Despite their leadoff hitting batting .167 the Padres are not producing runs. Am I ready for my paid pundit gig?
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
I realized how much Mittsy resembles another plutocrat when I saw this quote: “Ironic, isn’t it Smithers. This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you! ”
handsmile
@ice weasel: (#8)
Bulls-eye! Precisely.
Trumpeting the horse-race above all else is calculated to maximize revenue for the for-profit corporate media. It drives their business model and drives us crazy lamenting the charade.
Roger Moore
@Catsy:
The big advantage for Romney vs. McCain is the economy. In 2008, McCain was running for more of the same of what was in the process of trashing the economy. In 2012, Romney is going to run as an alternative to what has been wrong with the economy since 2008. I know, I know, it’s crazy because Obama has been (too) gradually fixing the terrible economy he inherited from Bush, but that’s the one thing that might swing undecided voters to Romney. Whether that’s a bigger factor than everything the Republicans have done to piss off everyone who’s not a straight white male is an open question.
willard
“[Mitt] is losing now in most polls despite having upside-down favorables.”
This statement makes perfect sense in the same parallel universe that the GOP budget actually would reduce the deficit and create jobs.
Frankensteinbeck
@Redshift:
One downside of being the party of angry old people is that your leaders are angry old people. ‘CLOUDS!!!’ is not a winning election message.
GregB
Putting the CON in consultant, eh Carter?
Cacti
@Patricia Kayden:
And the white vote as a percentage of the electorate has been in a steady decline of a few percentage points with each Presidential election cycle.
Given that Romney is presently underperforming his predecessor with non-white voters, he faces a situation where he needs 60%+ of the white vote.
Tom Q
@Redshift: I heard a pollster once say that taking a poll in the days just after a party’s convention is the equivalent of taking someone’s blood pressure after they’ve just run up a steep hill. Technically it’s an “accurate” reading, but to pretend it has any relation to the overall condition is purposeful misleading. Naturally, it’s a mainstay of American political coverage.
kth
BTW, pretty sure he meant “leading in most polls despite upside-down favorables”. That makes the most sense; it only doesn’t occur to one because the premise isn’t actually true.
TooManyJens
@kth: Except he can’t have meant that, because the next sentence is “When they turn the right way for him, polls will start to show him ahead.” Which implies that they’re not showing him ahead now.
PeakVT
It’s a question of resource allocation. If someone believes that Obama is in the fight of his life, then it would make sense for them to direct 100% of their resources to him. I don’t believe that’s the case, so I’m going to direct some (but not all) of my meager resources to other races, in the hope that doing so will get more people to vote for Ds downballot as well, instead of splitting or leaving lines blank.
Clime Acts
Ya know…whether it’s true or not, that’s what we need to do, don’t ya know…
So…this statement illustrates clearly why you’re completely useless as a blogger: EVERYTHING you write is warped by your hyper partisan perspective. You bend, twist, and otherwise shape everything you write to serve your agenda.
Duly noted, though kudos for being so nakedly blatant about it.
munira
@Gromit: You’re not the only one. That particular sentence makes no sense. There are probably others that are similar but I refuse to read the whole thing in order to find out.
Culture of Truth
Probably.
SatanicPanic
The comments on this story are full of win, and someone actually quoted me, thanks!
Culture of Truth
He lost some whites, but not all of them.
liberal
I thought you were some kind of applied mathematician or something.
Steve
@Patricia Kayden: The Democrats always lose white voters. Bill Clinton, who was just about the dream Democrat if your sole mission was to pick up white votes, lost white voters in both his elections. That’s just how it goes. We’re the party that likes to give free stuff to shiftless minorities, after all.
ThresherK
@Jay C: Yeah, I know. I was soft-pedaling my line and rolling my eyes a bit. (Curse you, internet, for not including my vocal tone or non-verbal communications.)
It’s easier on my blood pressure than what I did in 2000, wanting to scream “Confidence con, you suckers!” at some blow-dry reporting on the campaign about how Bush was “making a play” for Cal and Jersey.
jheartney
@Tom Q: Another excellent example of the same phenomenon (brief, misleading post-convention polling surge) is 1988, when Dukakis, on his way to a major shellacking, led GHWB for a few minutes.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The “press” needs controversy, they need the horse race, they need some kind of ‘gotcha’ to attract viewers but more importantly, to attract political advertising dollars. If the story now is that Obama is going to kick Romney’s ass this fall then it’s over and there’s nothing for them to milk. Yeah, like they are going to let that happen.
They have the perfect position in our ‘political economy’; they fuel the outrage and rake in the money.
No matter the outcome, they win.
Jay C
@Clime Acts:
Actually, you have a miniscule point here:
does read a tad harsh: what if we change it to something a bit less provocative, like:
Which has the additional advantage of being fundamentally true, as well as not (hopefully) jangling your seemingly hypersensitive partisan sensibilities?
Now FOAD, troll……
AA+ Bonds
Point out that he’s rich and a Nazi, a rich Nazi
AA+ Bonds
Whoa Clime Acts in here sussing out the wimpiest liberals who cave under the slightest pressure, time to start a .txt file and take names
Propaganda: learn how
MikeJ
@Jay C: The trolls are going to be upset any time a Dem dares say anything true about a Republican.
AA+ Bonds
Mitt Romney: hates gays whenever he needs to hate gays to get people to like him
patrick II
Simon Cowell on former American Idol and now superstar Lee … something, I forgot his last name.
AA+ Bonds
@MikeJ:
That’s not what a troll is
liberal
@Napoleon:
I don’t get all this rampant optimism either.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: I think this is the most likely explanation of what he meant to say: that Romney is only losing narrowly despite being more disliked than liked. Still, the implication is that Romney just needs to push a button and Be Liked More, and he hasn’t shown that ability in, what, 60 years or so.
AA+ Bonds
Lean on the gay business, talk about how Mitt Romney was the pastor of an anti-gay church and would rather see gays in prison all things considered
Argive
It’s more a matter of not being complacent. I worked for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia. We all knew that Obama was going to crush McCain in Philly. We had 35 offices (that number doubled for the 4 days leading up to the election), whereas AFAIK McCain had one office in the whole city and we didn’t know where it was until mid-October. But we still acted like Obama was 8 points behind in every poll, because we didn’t want to let our guard down for a second given how important PA was.
@Clime Acts:
That is what most political bloggers do.
jheartney
I must say I’m skeptical that Eskew is pushing this in an effort to maximize media dollars. It’s a virtual certainty that both Romney and his allied superPAC’s will be pumping firehoses of money at the POTUS race throughout the summer and fall, and that Obama will be obliged to do the same. Well-positioned consultants and media will pull down fortunes no matter what.
lacp
Well, Willard’s wife sez he has to unzip because he’s too stiff. Sounds to me like the whole election could boil down to the state of Willard’s willie.
No help for him from ALEC, though. Seems they have problems of their own.
http://philanthropy.com/article/What-Counts-as-Lobbying-A-New/131676/?sid=pt&utm_source=pt&utm_medium=en
shortstop
@Roger Moore: Precisely, and I think this theme has more power than many of us are admitting. However, it really only matters in true swing states; as someone said above, the rest of them ain’t budging regardless of what Obama and Romney do.
@Redshift: Off the top of my head, I remember the 2008 McCain arrogantly dismissing the concept of equal pay, looking confused when asked his position on employer insurance-covered contraception, screaming at a citizen for asking him why he called his wife a cunt, and, in a move both condescending and naive, nominating a wildly unqualified and mentally unstable person for the vice presidency because she had breasts. There were other incidents that led me to suspect that the old goat may not hold women in high regard, but I can’t recall them now. In other words, John McCain wouldn’t recognize a war on women if it got on a tire swing and aimed itself directly at his scowling face.
AA+ Bonds
1) Go through his financial statements again and trump up some
business about how he’s a cheater
2) Talk to Massholes and revive some dormant allegations of corruption
3) Talk about his Paris houseboy
AA+ Bonds
Allegations of homosexual harassment are probably your holy grail here
Burnspbesq
The bigger Obama’s victory, the longer his coattails will be. That’s my big-ass, obvious-to-all-but-the-most-obtuse pearl of wisdom for this morning.
We need the biggest win possible. Obama needs to be able to get nominees confirmed. We need Speaker Pelosi back. We need more Democratic governors and state legislatures. In those states where judges are elected, we need to root out the FedSoc hacks. Etc, etc.
I’m curious as to whether Eskew’s firm is earning money from the Romney campaign.
AA+ Bonds
Find some of the worst people associated with Bain and make his campaign think they have to spend time answering for them
The point is to throw everything at him, keep him on the defensive, push his campaign out of the narrative cockpit by any means
You’re bloggers, sling mud
Tom Q
@jheartney: And according to our pundit world, Dukakis “blew” the 1988 election, by being insufficuently quick to talk about Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance. The fact that Reagan’s second term had left peace and prosperity that would have been hard for any opposition candidate to beat was buried.
I think, along with the need-for-horserace thing, many of our pundits really do believe that every little tick of every media cycle, rather than the overall elctoral gestalt, is what decides elections.
Clime Acts
@Jay C:
Hey, dumbass, how about if DougJ just wrote things as they apply to an objective reality, instead of, you know writing everything from the position of “OMG, WE HAVE TO ELECT BARACK OBAMA I WISH I WAS A BLOGGER ON HIS REELECTION WEB SITE” perspective?
Too much to ask?
AA+ Bonds
By the way, if you haven’t read McCain 2008’s opposition research file on Romney, you’re already operating with a handicap
Clime Acts
@Argive:
Read Digby. There’s someone who generally supports Obama and the Dem side, but doesn’t do it like a blind idiot.
Burnspbesq
@Clime Acts:
Doug is who he is.
You could always start your own blog.
AA+ Bonds
Remember that voters in the American ‘center’ are paranoid narcissists who want you to prove a conspiracy against THEM, and them SPECIFICALLY, by the other candidate
Establish a quasi-consistent framework for this conspiracy and let their imaginations run wild
See if Mitt Romney has ever said (or if you can get him to say) something bad about the quack supplement business or funding for it
that’s a real hot button with idiots regardless of politics and you can operate in a fact-free zone
Chyron HR
@Clime Acts:
That’s hilarious coming from the guy who insists that George Zimmerman is a political prisoner of the
fucking goonObama administration. No fact-twisting, bending, or otherwise shaping there, no sir.Burnspbesq
@Clime Acts:
“Read Digby. There’s someone who generally supports Obama and the Dem side, but doesn’t do it like a blind idiot.”
PLEASE tell me that’s intended to be facetious.
Catsy
@Roger Moore:
In response to which Obama only has to ask one question: “what do you propose doing that is different than the Bush administration policies which got the economy into this mess?”
Crunch the numbers on the difference between Romney’s lead with white men and Obama’s lead with everyone else, and you’ll find that you have your answer. :>
Clime Acts
@Burnspbesq:
Are you really going to say that bloggers, who by the nature of what they do, put their writing and themselves out there for praise and criticism, shouldn’t be criticized unless the reader who is bitching is willing to start blogging too?
weak
I’m an artist. Pretty sure most people who critique my work aren’t painters. And when the occasional razzie comes my way, I don’t generally say “shut up unless you paint too.”
Clime Acts
@Chyron HR:
Link to where I made a statement even remotely like that, please.
After you’re unable to find one, I’ll expect an apology.
Clime Acts
@Burnspbesq:
Since you’re too cool to come right out and say what you’re implying, I’ll ask: What are you implying?
gaz
As much as it pains me to find myself in agreement with our resident troll, I’m on board with his take on Digby.
ETA: I’m not ashamed to admit that she’s one of the more thoughtful bloggers out there, and that I read her regularly.
shortstop
@Catsy: I think the key is making sure they stay pissed off until November, especially if the GOP cuts out the worst of its XX-bashing. I’m not worried about the memories of racial minorities, immigrants and the LGBT community, but I have noticed that too many white women tend to let bygones be bygones when it comes to direct political assaults on their rights, opportunities and autonomy. There’s plenty of skirmishing still going on in the state legislatures, and there are still individual Congresscritters proposing outrageousness, but the Republican Congressional caucus as a whole seems to be backing away a bit from much of its in-your-face stuff with women.
Citizen_X
@shortstop:
In Ohio–and the rest of the Midwest–Obama’s campaign should keep repeating Mitt’s line about letting GM fail. That should get the attention of the undecided/low info/white males on the fence, etc.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Which is going to be hard if he can’t even get 50% of white women to vote for him. I guess it’s back to the old voter suppression approach if he wants a prayer of winning.
gaz
@Citizen_X: I’m pretty confident that GM is indeed on the menu WRT to Obama’s campaign in the midwest.
AA+ Bonds
I think Democrats are really missing an opportunity because they haven’t hammered Romney and other conservatives about whether insurers should be required to cover quack supplements and bullshit New Age therapies at the same rate as real medicine
What they need to do is: compare how these things aren’t covered with coverage for icky spooky scary things to idiots that supposedly cause autism in kids or give you the Freemason cancer or whatever
There are tons of libertarians/conservatives who swear by these things and are super defensive about how they are bullshit and will just flip out defending them over and above their politics
Talk about the Republican-Big-Pharma conspiracy to keep the supermedicine of the Aztecs from curing us of AIDS or whatever
A whole bunch of self-identified “small business owners” in the United States are part of pyramid schemes to push this bullshit, way more than in other countries since we think regulation is a problem here, so they believe it is in their self-interest to get this covered
(oh, and those people are REALLY loud on social media sites – free negative ads, in other words)
gaz
@Roger Moore: Voter suppression efforts only effect close races. Zimbabwe, we ain’t.
Mike Lamb
Despite…Mr. Eskew keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means…
gaz
@Mike Lamb: heh. win.
Argive
@Clime Acts:
OK. So go read Digby and not DougJ.
gaz
@SatanicPanic:
If that was your quote that was me. I’d have h/t’d you but I accidentally opened it over my BJ page, and lost the thread.
meh.
WaPoSucks1 is my screenname on that site. Everywhere else I’m gaz or toaster pastry
I’m fairly certain you can immediately understand why =)
AA+ Bonds
Can I put this in a perspective y’all will understand:
Reason magazine is pimping a story from the Koch-backed Carolina Journal about North Carolina trying to regulate bullshit dangerous diabetic-diet counseling from unlicensed quacks
This story is by a former “reporter” for the 700 Club and it still has a bunch of liberals fooled enough to clog my Facebook feed, not to mention the conservatives and libertarians
You too can ride this stupid fucking train
Do it by tempting Republicans (Republicans, who don’t think anything should be goddamn covered) into attacking quack-therapy “research” and denying that insurers should cover this stuff at the same rates
AA+ Bonds
Free the “Big Pharma” propaganda and a bunch of assholes will follow
gaz
@feebog: Not again….
PLEASE DELETE AND REPOST.
AA+ Bonds
Can I put this in a perspective y’all will understand:
Reason magazine is pimping a story from the Koch-backed Carolina Journal about North Carolina trying to regulate bullshit dangerous diabetic-diet counseling from unlicensed quacks
This story is by a former “reporter” for the 700 Club and it still has a bunch of liberals fooled enough to clog my Facebook feed, not to mention the conservatives and libertarians
You too can ride this stupid fucking train
Do it by tempting Republicans (Republicans, who don’t think anything should be goddamn covered) into attacking quack-therapy “research” and denying that insurers should cover this stuff at the same rates
SatanicPanic
@gaz: Well that made my day, thanks!
amk
Did feebog troll this thread just now ?
Mike Lamb
@Clime Acts: Isn’t there a difference between critiquing style vs. subject matter?
Nellcote
If Rmoney wins it will be because of voter suppression.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Napoleon:
There are more voter suppression laws on the books than there were in 2004. And also more blatant fraud (like that woman with the laptop in WI or OH who keeps finding just enough votes for Republican victory… once all the other precincts have reported).
If it’s close enough to steal, in enough of the swing states, Obama loses.
Hopefully, it won’t be close enough to steal. I’m hoping the Obama/Romney debates will make sure of that.
Canuckistani Tom
I’m gonna totally disagree with you DougJ.
If your dude has a super lead in the final days, then you concentrate on GOTV and on putting up signs along the borders of the riding/district, and along major routes. You want the people driving by/through to see your team’s colour more than the other guy’s
One of the joys of the Canadian parliament with multiple parties is that you have more than one opponent. And trust me, it makes winning that much better.
There’s winning because your team got one vote more than the team in second.
There’s winning because your team got 50% of the votes cast
And then there’s winning because your team got more votes than all the others COMBINED.(he he he)
TL,DR version is this:
WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE?
Rob in Buffalo
@FlipYrWhig: Eskew’s argument (or “argument”) is that Romney’s unfavorables will decline once it sinks in among Republican voters that he is the nominee, for better or worse. That sounds reasonable to me, though Eskew exaggerates the point and seems to apply that Romney’s numbers will simply flip completely and he’ll surge into the lead.
Romney’s favorable/unfavorable numbers now are 35%-47%. Does everyone really think that these won’t even out in a month or two?
I hope and pray that Obama wins. But I’m not confident, not at all.
FlipYrWhig
@Rob in Buffalo: I do not think so, no. I think Romney is obviously oily, empty, uncomfortable, and insincere. He still might have a shot on pure anti-Obama passion in the electorate, but I have a hard time seeing Romney finding a way to become likeable. The more people see him, the less they like him.
FlipYrWhig
@Rob in Buffalo: IOW, he can get votes from people who think, “I don’t like him or even trust him, but I don’t have to feel good about him to know he’d be an improvement over the current guy.” But he’s not going to win over many more people on likeability or approval per se.
Bokonon
I think what the Washington Post is really saying is, “we are poised to deliver Mitt Romney the best months of media coverage he has ever experienced in his political career. Because we need a horse race … and the GOP’s big contributors are our advertising base.”
Rob in Buffalo
Well I’m a lifelong Bills/Sabres fan so pessimism comes naturally to me. I hope to Grid you’re right.
Rob in Buffalo
Heh.
Todd Dugdale
I get irritated by the hand-wringing Democrat who goes into detail about how Obama will get crushed and we are all screwed, and then finishes up with an admonition to “get out the vote!”.
Who is going to work on GOTV after you just told them that we are doomed?
Overconfidence isn’t the Left’s problem, anyway. It’s the hand-wringing emo jackasses who feel “let down” because they didn’t realise that legislation has to be passed and stuff, and because the President never called them for advice.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bokonon:
This would require infiltrating the WaPo building and spiking the water coolers and coffee machines with veratiserum.
Tone In DC
@John McCain:
LULz.
That is wrong. Lindsey Graham undoubtedly has plenty of machismo (for a G00per).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Rob in Buffalo:
The cause of those unfavorable are Mitt Romney himself. He apparently has the best campaign staff money can buy but they can’t save him from himself.
Romney had six years to prepare for that primary and make peace with the Evangelicals, yet he didn’t and could only win by playing up how awful his opponents were. Romney is Romney’s own worst enemy.
Todd Dugdale
@Tractarian:
This is spot on. The Right is still waiting for this surge. It was supposed to be two weeks, because it takes time to “rally the troops”. Now it’s two months. Then, it’ll be after the Convention.
The expected gain from this awaited surge always seems to be the exact percentage of Obama’s lead. It’s the 2012 version of the 2008 “Bradley Effect”; the magical thing that we can’t explain but have complete faith in.
But it’s over. Romney already got his bounce from being the presumed nominee. The Right seems to have this really weird idea that Republicans are around 60% of the electorate, so they must have 20% of the electorate to gain in a rally to Romney.
Schlemizel
Outside of the people that read this blog who gives a fuck what line we spew? Like it or not the only people we are talking to are people we need to do whatever they can to defeat Willard and the Wingtards this fall. So we better be telling each other this is not in the bag.
OTOH the fucking Washington fucking Post talks to millions, directly or indirectly. So when they say Willard can plan his inaugural events there are plenty of people who will take it as read that he will win. Its one of the reasons he stands a chance and we have to make sure we do the hard job of ringing phones & knocking on doors & getting our people to the polls.
I don’t see what your problem is, this is just how it is acknowledge & move on.
Jebediah
@Clime Acts:
There is a difference between critiquing and saying “you should not paint that way, you should paint this way.” And to those people, you should say “then go ahead and make paintings the way you like.”
You think his blogging is so terrible, go ahead and show him how it’s done, genius.
kuvasz
All politics is local. You get out the vote enven when the your presidential canidate is up big in the polls because his supporeters also vote for down-ticket canidates of the same party. right now most states are either governed by a Republican governor or have a majority Republican legislature. Get out the vote to overcome that even if Obama is ahead by 30 points.
Patricia Kayden
Actually, I kind of agree with those who say we cannot be over confident. I’ll be on pins and needles until President Obama actually clinches the electoral college.
I still remember going to bed late on Election Night in 2000 thinking that Gore was the President-Elect only to wake up the next morning to the nightmare that became the Bush Presidency.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
by tremendous momentum they mean all the votes obama was never going to get, ever. the same votes mccain had in his back pocket. show me where romney is converting anyone new to the gop block? do they think a gay advisor is going to swing the gay vote to the gop?
is that what they are really counting on?
David Koch
test
Charles Koch
test-2
David Koch
test-3
mclaren
If Mitt Romney “plays his hand well”… Let’s see, that translates as:
If Mitt Romney can convince the American public that it’s a good idea to cut their social services while giving ginormous tax breaks to the rich to pay for them…
How does that work, exactly? How do you “play that hand well”?