Betty Cracker’s piece earlier, taken with Tom Levenson’s piece below are the kinds of things to warm my day. They give me good feelings about the election coming up. Obama looks to win, and win big. I heard on NPR this morning that he was up by eight points over Romney on average in current national polling, an advantage that none of the last three winning presidents enjoyed over their opponents at this stage of the election.
That’s great. It’s also not enough. I don’t want the President to win. I want him to utterly destroy the republican candidate and his Eddie Munster in a cheap suit-looking succubus incubus as viable political candidates forever. To paraphrase Anne-Laurie from earlier today, throw the bastard an anvil. I want to see six more seats in the US Senate (but I’ll settle for three in this tough year) and I want to see Nancy Pelosi wield the Speaker’s gavel again, but I’d call it a win if we send 15 freshman teabaggers home with their balls in their hands.
I want to run up the motherfucking score.
H/T to commenter Josie, contact safe seat House Dems and ask them to contribute to protecting their weaker brethren and increasing the caucus through this story at GOS.
And here’s our Act Blue thermometer, which will be making an appearance on every one of my posts from now till election day:
Let’s see if we can’t break 50K today!
Virginia Highlander
Incubus, my dear sir.
Succubi are nominally female.
TaMara (BHF)
This is what I’ve been thinking for days. I want the House back.
Jebediah
Hear, hear!
Make the fuckers cry.
schrodinger's cat
Hear hear! Its time to bury them, so that they don’t rise again.
They = Lunatics in charge of the Republican party
Chris
Kill them all and let FSM sort em out.
Irving
@Virginia Highlander: Oh, stop being a pedant and go beat up on a Republican already.
Liberty60
The GOP needs to understand the futility of the siren song of Ayn Rand, and the only thing that will do that is a Goldwater level defeat.
Surreal American
Shouldn’t we be at the point by now where the GOP asks Alan Keyes to replace the nominee?
Mary G
Absolutely. Kick ’em while they’re down. Crush ’em and make them the modern Whigs. Dr. Johnson said everyone is either the hammer or the anvil and it’s my turn to be a hammer.
Nina
There are a lot of tough laws that we’re going to need in the next decade or so to combat global warming and to start to restore the integrity of the world’s financial system. We can’t get them through with any significant Republican presence on Capitol Hill.
Run up the score! More and better Democrats, and a few Socialists to keep them honest.
The Red Pen
Dick Morris has declared the “47% comments” to be “good for
McCainRomney.” That almost certainly means they were disastrous.Best Freeper comment of the day: “I can’t imagine any American rallying around a president who is giving our country away to fanatics.”
Neither can I, Mr. Ironic Freeper.
jwb
Fuck yeah, throw them an anvil, throw them two or three or four. Make them weep, make them so embarrassed that they’ll be afraid to crawl out of their parents’ basements. Put their clown cars through the crusher, take the sledgehammer to the Wurlitzer.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Let’s do it. I think it’s actually quite possible, unless they lock the presidential ticket far away from the press. Or any functions where they can be taped by citizen journalists.
OT – one of the peculiar charms of Balloon Juice is its high quality of pedantry:
dmsilev
Steve Benen had an interesting point this morning. Based on that huge Pew poll that was released a couple of days ago, Mitt Romney is the only major-party Presidential candidate going back to 1988 who has a net-negative favorability rating 7 or 8 weeks before the election. And that poll was taken before Let-Them-Eat-Cake-Gate erupted a few days ago.
Meanwhile, the next move from the strategic geniuses at the Romney campaign is, according to Politico, Romney rescue plan: More Mitt”.
Edit:
Yes, that will help enormously. Help Obama, that is.
schrodinger's cat
@Virginia Highlander: Apparently incubus was lying about his body fat too. I suspected as much. Because 6% body fat sounded too low, I know for a fact that it is unhealthy for a woman. Michael Phelps has body fat of about 8%, and I don’t think Ryan is fitter or leaner than Phelps.
Z. Mulls
Oh, come on, who doesn’t know the difference between an incubus and a succubus.
Trust me, once you’ve been visited by one, you sure as hell know the difference.
Violet
Yes! This! I want the entire Republican party in its current incarnation destroyed. Ground into dust. Keep running up the score.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Well, if you live in OK (like soonergrunt) or in MO (like me) the most we can do to run up the score is cheerlead or give money. Well, I can cast a vote for Blanche McCaskill which makes us 23.476 Democratic Misery voters slightly ahead of the 13.693 Democrats in OK in terms of what we can do to affect the outcome.
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): We is elitist and proud of it. STN.
justawriter
But won’t such shrill comments damage the spirit of bipartisanship that we all know is the key to harmonious prosperity and unicorn poop?
If you hear anyone ask that question, please tie them to the same anvil. The best way to encourage bipartisanship is to reduce the republican party to an impotent rump. Let’s beat them, beat them harder and then beat them again.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
In casual conversation, be sure that every sentence with “Republicans” in it also contains the phrase “right wing extremists”. For variety’s sake you can substitute “sabotuers”, “crazies”, “lunatics”, or “bomb throwers”. Also, keep bringing up the Congressional GOP as an issue.
__
In the 1980s Republicans made “liberal” a dirty word. Time to repay them the favor.
jl
What would be best is that these two guys get Stassen-ized and they run hopeless campaigns every four years.
I have no idea what could be done to influence them to do that.
If we are lucky and R and R completely humiliate themselves, would be great if Ryan was such an egomaniac he decided to give it a few more tries.
Violet
@The Red Pen:
Ha? Seriously? That’s hilarious. That’s the turd on top of the shit sundae that Romney and the R’s have to eat.
KG
@Liberty60: I’ve been wondering what happens out west if the election is called early, like let’s say Obama carries Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin… there’s basically no viable route to 270 for Romney at that point. If they (or Florida) are all called before polls close in, say, Arizona, does that help Carmona’s chances in the Senate, or swing Arizona to Obama’s column?
There’s a few western and mountain states that it could matter in. Odds?
BenA
One of the things that gives me hope that we can run this thing up is this: If Mitt’s running such a disastrously bad campaign and money is already running short… How good could their ground game possibly be? There were already stories about ineptitude during the primaries… I think they were counting on a motivated base to be their ground game… but if the base is dispirited..
dmsilev
@The Red Pen:
I have high standards in terms of which always-wrong pundit to trust. What is the current line from Bill Kristol?
Lurking Canadian
@schrodinger’s cat: 6%, 16%, 26%…something like that, anyway. We already know this is a man who rounds 241 minutes down to 170. It just isn’t polite to mock the innumerate.
Litlebritdifrnt
This is funny “Mitt Romney Sucks, pass it on” has nearly 8 million notes on Tumblr
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/mitt-romney-sucks-pass-it-on-has-almost-8-millio
ericblair
@dmsilev:
To explain: you’re an ad exec, your client has a fucking hopeless product and won’t listen to reason and is pissed off that you haven’t been able to magically hypnotize everyone into buying his shit. So you write off this account, develop a big ad campaign with his ugly face plastered all over it to shut him up, and run to the bank to cash his check before his useless company goes tits up.
Face
Fixed for definitional accuracy of “teabagger”.
? Martin
@Virginia Highlander:
Gonna need to provide some proof that sooner is wrong on that.
elmo
What is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Violet
FWIW, I was recently in Utah for several days. Saw zero Romney yard signs or bumper stickers or anything. Flew into Salt Lake and then was out of the city for a few days. Did see some Obama bumper stickers, a few local election yard signs, and one giant Orrin Hatch billboard on the way back to the airport. No Romney signs or bumper stickers or anything. In UTAH.
dmsilev
@KG: The networks won’t explicitly call the race until someone reaches 270. Given the number of electoral votes on the West Coast, that’s unlikely to happen until their polls close. If it does, if Obama passes 270 just based on called states in the first three time zones, we’re probably looking at a 1984-esque blowout.
Now, it’s true that if VA and OH and FL are called for Obama by 8 PM Eastern, the election is effectively over and everyone who has access to an electoral map will know it, but the mass media won’t make that inference and the impact on turnout n the west will be minor at best.
Strontium 90
@KG: I remember reading somewhere that there is not enough of a time difference for that to happen. Also, the major media outlets resist calling Eastern states until the polls are close to closing out West.
Edit – what dmsilev said!
Villago Delenda Est
Soonergrunt, I heartily agree. Following the breakthrough, one commences the pursuit. This is to be an utter rout. Drive the 27% back under the rocks they crawled out from under in the first place. Exult in the lamentations of their women.
No quarter. Annihilate them. Do a full scale, no mercy march across Georgia in the William Tecumseh Sherman tradition.
Cantrip
@dmsilev: But but but surely UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH! CARTER! OBUMMER!. Anecdata, I know, but the traditional repub voters I know in Missouri dislike having their noses contemptuously rubbed in the dirt by fat cats even more than they dislike gays. Several of them will be leaving the presidential box empty and voting downticket only.
danah gaz
Wow. Some asshole teabagger just spent the last 2 days demanding that I post my finances to a forum and insisting I was “on the dole”
Turns out he was in the military for 27 years and is now collecting a nice Government Pension(TM)
In other words, the ultimate Dole.
But you know, he’s not like those “other people”, because shut up, that’s why.
/facepalm
naturally, he’s a Romney supporter. jesus fucked up christ.
Cassidy
1) Nothing indicates they have any.
2) This does not require an election.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@elmo:
Updated for modern times.
dmsilev
@ericblair: Yeah, pretty much this. It basically means that the Romney campaign has been colonized by a team of blood-sucking leeches who are all trying to skim as much off the top as they possibly can before the whole edifice collapses.
Irony is a bitch.
? Martin
So he’s going to get back to talking about how awesome universal health care is. Yeah, that’ll help.
The Dangerman
I want the analysts of FOX “News” to have the worst night of their lives on the first Tuesday night in November. Maybe Karl Rove will go seppuku on live TV.
trollhattan
To frame it in Civil War terminology: Don’t be McClellan, be Sherman.
Punchy
Romney wins this election by 3%.
ericblair
@elmo:
“Hot water,good dentistry and soft lavatory paper” – Cohen the Barbarian
patroclus
This reminds me of the typical chant after a pitcher beans a batter in baseball: “Hit em again, hit em again, harder, harder!”
Brian R.
Hell yes.
A narrow win won’t be enough. If we want to get this country moving again, we need a landslide.
maya
It will be no victory until the bloody balls of Karl Rove are rolling around in the scales of justice.
nominus
@Liberty60:
Indeed. Close races only encourage them to turn the crazy dial up to maximum. The only chance they have of making the party reasonable again is to suffer one crushing defeat after another until they realize that they can either ratchet up the crazy and follow the Whig party into irrelevance, or finally start listening to the moderates.
quannlace
Morris runs his own consulting firm, believe it or not. Who the hell hires this guy?
Falmouth
Just want to say that I agree and hope they are ground into the dirt but, I don’t think a majority of Americans are smart enough to know what the Repubs really stand for. I also think that the Repubs will once again say that Mittens wasn’t Conservative (radical) enough and will continue on their merry way to hopefully oblivion.
Anoniminous
Its as certain as anything can be in politics the GOP will lose House Seats this November. Certainly the trend is in place for enough seats to flip.
Gonna be a wild ride.
Napoleon
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This – I have been convinced for sometime that what we need to do is hang the term radical around their necks like a millstone, and once we do it will take them a generation or more to remove it.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: Absolutely. Utter destruction is the goal. Grind them into dust.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Who would have thought that a presidential candidate referring to half of America as lowlife leeches, and then, far from apologizing, choosing to “double down” on his remark, would cost that candidate the election?
GregB
I just had an exchange with a true-believer wingnut and he said that it doesn’t matter who wins because Romney is not a real conservative.
I think the smell of loss is beginning to permeate Camp Romney.
Time to throw some lime on the cadaver of his campaign.
jwb
@schrodinger’s cat: He probably heard somewhere that elite runners have 2% body fat (I remember reading that factoid sometime in my life) and, like his bullshit marathon time, thought 6% was therefore a safe bullshit number to throw out.
jimPortlandOR
oh boy, do I agree with this on RMoney, the Senate and the House. Make them eat their own shit.
This is clearly the case where we need to destroy the GOP in order to save it. A whole new generation of right-center people need to start over again, perhaps using the Eisenhower GOP as a starting place. There are NO moderates left in today’s GOP, but we need a vibrant two party system to prevent the one-party rule that leads to even worse corruption than current.
We may need to conduct wholesale surgery on the Constitution as well, but lets leave that for later.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Cantrip:
I’m surrounded by “traditional republican voters” here in Central Misery (second reddest county in the state). Few people here ever put up yard signs for any given politician, be they state or federal. Instead, they post
“Vote Pro Life”
signs in their yard. Sends the same “we’re just like you in hating the Ni-CLANG!” message under the guise of protecting the zygotes.
Having said that, they do live in that single issue ghetto so as long as they think Rmoney is virulently pro-birther, they’ll vote for him regardless of what they think about his crazy religion.
I agree that the whole “insider/outsider” dynamic out here in red, rurl, inbred Misery can result in the odd vote cast here or there but for the most part, everybody votes in lockstep.
Strontium 90
@ericblair: true story: a large company (multistate company) I used to work had to file for bankruptcy back in the early 1990s. One of the anecdotes running up to the filing was that the company had to order a shit-ton of “debtor-in-possession” stamps. Of course, they ordered those stamps on account and after they were delivered, they filed and the company that provided them got in line with the other unsecured creditors for collection of the bill!
TooManyJens
@TaMara (BHF):
I want NANCY SMASH back!
Villago Delenda Est
@The Dangerman:
FSM does not love us that much. If she did, we’d be watching Santorum or Gingrich doing the Hindenburg metaphor right now, not Rmoney.
But we can hope.
PeakVT
@Punchy: Weak. Come on, you can do better than that.
Frankensteinbeck
I want Romney to keep talking. He is the face of the Republican Party right now. I want this campaign to end with EVERYONE knowing exactly what the GOP stands for, a spoiled, cruel, arrogant rich asshole who robs the system, hates the poor, kicks minorities because he can, and who knows jack fucking squat about the rest of the world, but would love to bomb it. For the next thirty years, I want Americans to think of Mitt Romney as the GOP, not Ronald Reagan.
@dmsilev:
‘A Ryan/Palin ticket would be awesome.’ The man is so wrong he’s betting on hypothetical impossible fantasies that would still suck and fail utterly.
Lurking Canadian
@dmsilev: In November 2008, I was flipping back and forth between the US news and the Canadian news. At about 10:00pm, with the American anchors scrupulously avoiding making any predictions about the overall outcome, the Canadian anchors made a statement like this: “Well, for superstitious reasons, the US networks won’t claim an Obama victory until the polls close in California. However, there isn’t a person in the US who doesn’t know that Obama has California’s electoral votes locked up, so this thing is basically over.”
patroclus
Here in Illinois, we’re hoping for 4 House seats to switch from red to blue – we just need the rest of the country to do at least 21 more.
jwb
@BenA: Romney’s ground game is already awful, so if he’s running short of cash, it will only get worse. One reason I still want to give money to Obama’s campaign while also sending resources to Senate and House is that he’s got a good ground game and that will only benefit all the other races on the ticket.
Raven
NO PRISONERS!!!!!!
Violet
So all this is happening a bit earlier than the traditional October surprise. We still haven’t had a debate yet. Any thoughts on how this might go? Could people get bored and think Obama has it in the bag and stay home? What if the expectations for Mitt are so low at the debates that he looks pretty good by comparison, if he just doesn’t fuck it up.
Not trying to concern troll, but this election is just so crazy and we’re in uncharted territory with how things are working. Wondering what people’s thoughts are on how to keep the momentum going and get people out to vote for Obama.
quannlace
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their pundits.
Better
schrodinger's cat
@jwb: I think one would have to be dying of starvation and malnutrition with body fat that low. Elite male athletes (Olympic level) have body fat between 6 to 8%. I don’t think he is 6ft 2 inches tall either.
Culture of Truth
I want Dems and Independents turning out in droves. I wants Republicans and conservatives, at home, in despair, crying in their socks.
I want them to hate Mitt Romney for what he has done to them, despise him for his weakness, loathe him for his slick, empty opprtunism, have contempt for him betrayal of them.
Like this:
Club For Growth: Romney Might Suck, or Maybe Not
Sept. 20 (Washington Post) — Calling Mitt Romney a “mixed
bag” when it comes to fiscal issues, Club For Growth President
Chris Chocola offered a lukewarm appraisal of the Republican presidential nominee.
“We’ll see if he’ll be a pro-growth president. I think he has potential
to exceed expectations,” Chocola, the head of the anti-tax group,
said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington.
What exactly are Chocola’s expectations for Romney?
“They are uncertain. That’s the thing. We don’t really know.
That’s the knock against Romney, is you don’t really know how he’ll serve,”
the former Indiana congressman added.
gvg
@KG: Don’t know but I strongly suspect some states like Florida will be slow to count. Just because the polls close doesn’t mean the results will be in.
If it gets really bad though, it might surpress turnout west. I’m thinking Florida will be close for instance, however if he keeps putting his foot in his mouth and Florida is forcasted at Obama +15 or something, then it might get called early. Last time we were waiting on several important states rather late night because the networks really didn’t want to be wrong ala 2000.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Brian R.:
Fixed. By popular vote standards, Obama got a decent enough “landslide” in 08 and even with control of both houses for two years, he had a helluva time getting shit thru. Unless we get both houses, he could win by 10 million votes and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if Orange Julius still holds the speaker’s gavel.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
More like, realize future work on this account is unlikely, so let’s run up the tab as much as possible to get a cushion to tide us over the career-damage being tied to such a turkey.
But yeah, if I was a consultant for Romney, I’d be submitting invoices each week.
FormerSwingVoter
SWEEP THE LEG!
trollhattan
@maya:
I’d settle for Rove going hunting with Cheney.
jwb
@Cantrip: We want them so dispirited they think what’s the point of even showing up at the polls.
Raven
@Violet: What’s great is that the rank and file wingnut really have themselves convinced that Obama is a bumbling “lightning” who stands no chance without his teleprompter. Crush these motherfuckers.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Repubs need to go down so that the rest of us can survive.
We need to talk about living wage jobs and things like that instead of tax cuts for the thieves.
Romney has clarified the class war and now he doesn’t know what to do with it. Put him out in the cornfield.
danah gaz
We need to take back congress. If Reid doesn’t make good on his promise to end the filibuster we’ll need more than 60 senate seats.
I’m not sure that’s possible, but I’ll tell you this:
I will personally pistol whip each and every single one of you if you do not vote in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020.
I will find you. I will stalk you. I will nail your pets to a tree. And I will pistol whip you.
/best menacing face
I hope I’ve made myself clear.
Randy P
@Mary G: Interesting you should mention the Whigs. I’ve been having a conversation lately with my favorite historian (my daughter) asking how the Whigs died and whether we had a similar set of circumstances. I’d say the short summary is “maybe”, and that the Tea Party and the Paulistas already had the party fighting for continued existence.
Forum Transmitted Disease
The key, BTW, is not to crush the GOP – they’re handling that chore just fine on their own – but to crush the Village. Cut the head off the monster, as it were.
piratedan
@KG: Carmona is already showing a surge based on a local TV Poll, he’s up on Flake by 5 points 44 to 39. Granted, it’s a TV poll, but NOBODY was talking about this being a close race before and Carmona is a perfect storm candidate, former military, former SWAT, former Surgeon General who left office over an ethics dispute. Is he a perfect progressive candidate, not in the least, but he’s not a Jon Kyl protege like Flake.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
I don’t want the Republicans to be either. I want them to be the sword that’s being beaten into a plowshare.
Pen
@jwb: Wait, wah? Anything below 8% is in the redzone for men and pretty much guaranteed fatal level for woman. How the hell can someone get to 2% without serious health problems? I’m at 8-9% now and I couldn’t, wouldn’t, drop any further for any reason. That’s my floor level and the lowest I’ve seen is 5.5%, and even that got the guy berated for unsafe composition.
Pen
@jwb: Wait, wah? Anything below 8% is in the redzone for men and pretty much guaranteed fatal level for woman. How the hell can someone get to 2% without serious health problems? I’m at 8-9% now and I couldn’t, wouldn’t, drop any further for any reason. That’s my floor level and the lowest I’ve seen is 5.5%, and even that got the guy berated for unsafe composition.
patroclus
On the other hand, if Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered by a pair of gay-married Islamofascist immigrant abortionists, would you still favor Obama and the Dems?
jwb
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t disagree with the numbers on body fat, just reporting what I remember hearing from a number of years back and I suspect it’s the kind of factoid that Ryan internalized to spin his bullshit number. I don’t know about his height, but I can say that he’s certainly not 6’2″ at the weight he reports.
Culture of Truth
“You got a problem with that?!?”
“No sensei”
Villago Delenda Est
@danah gaz:
Yes’m!
Anoniminous
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
One of the nice things about 2010 was the crushing of the Blue Dogs. They were a major barrier in 2008 – 2010 to passing legislation and providing cover for the Goopers.
jwb
@danah gaz: No, 60 is pretty much impossible this year due to the number of Dems up from re-election. 57 is the best case scenario I’ve seen anywhere.
Seanly
@elmo:
Conan FTW. We need to win house seats in traditional R districts (and re-take traditional D districts lost). We need people who will work with Obama.
quannlace
Every time I see that name I think it’s a hair treatment for baldness.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Violet:
__
Fortunately the wingnutterati are out in force telling everybody who will lend them an ear that Romney is just fine despite what the polls say because he is going to clean Obama’s clock at the debates. Fucking expectations game, how does it work?
danah gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: =)
Now there’s a good man. =)
big kiss! (on the cheek, I’m married)
Josie
This story might have a beneficial effect on the voting in Ohio and a few other places. Once again the Romney campaign pees in the Wheaties.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/20/1134307/-Headlines-about-Romney-coal-ad-focus-on-miners-forced-to-serve-as-unpaid-prop-at-Romney-speech
schrodinger's cat
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: This what happens when you live your life in the Fox bubble.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@jwb:
If Harry makes good on filibuster changes, 55 seats would be sufficient. He’d have just enough padding (barely) to allow Repup Lite Senators like McCaskill to vote against the party while still passing legislation.
More importantly, it would allow potential Supreme Court nominees to actually get to an up or down vote. Because if you want to see the Senate Republicans become virulently wingnut, reactionary (not sure they can get any worse but still), wait until the next Supreme nomination comes to their chamber, especially if it’s to replace Fat Tony or Uncle Clarence.
danah gaz
@jwb: 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020
You’d better vote. Grrr.
I mean it. =)
BenA
@schrodinger’s cat:
The dumbest thing is I’m sure the guy’s in great shape… but he still has to lie about it. It’s like when he lied about running the marathon. He turned what really is a pretty good time for an amateur into a world class time…
It’s a allegory for the GOP as a whole… they lie even when the truth would serve the better.
Villago Delenda Est
@Josie:
They cannot stop fucking up.
/tinfoil hat mode ON
The entire campaign is made up of Obama moles.
Corner Stone
Romney is finished as a political entity. I doubt we’ll ever even see him used in any surrogate type role after this season is over.
Ryan on the other hand. The greatest outcome would be for him to actually lose his House seat as well. Anyone have any on the ground feel for potential in that race? I know his challenger is pretty feisty but is Ryan a 60% lock?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
__
If the Dems had held serve in the 2010 midterms it would not have been so bad, because Obama’s slow moving legislative agenda would have had 2 more years of steady progress to accumulate, especially with the big issue of health care reform already passed. The 2010 midterms did incalculable damage to this country. The real test of Democratic strength will be not only can we take back the House and keep the Senate this year, but how do we avoid losing ground in 2014?
Randy P
I’ve decided to focus donations on the House. In my local district, George Badey has a good shot. I’m getting a lot of pleas from Emily’s List and the DCCC. Any opinions on efficiency of those donations?
GregB
@Josie:
You mean the man who didn’t blink when told that the Chinese factory workers who slept three to a bunk, 12 to a room 125 to a toilet in a building surrounded by high walls and razor wire would use unpaid labor as a campaign prop?
jwb
@Pen: Don’t get me wrong, that 2% is nothing but a number that sort of made the rounds at one point. Who knows where it came from, some Olympics broadcast during the 90s or something. I don’t think there is any truth to it. I’m just imagining how Paul Ryan pulled 6% out of his ass. Like his marathon time and probably the fourteeners as well, he gives a ridiculous answer because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about and extrapolates from some number he has picked up from the general detritus floating around culture.
Anoniminous
@piratedan:
THAT got my interest, so I looked it up:
Carmona 44%
Flake 39%
Undecided 16%
That’s … unexpected. (He understated.)
Corner Stone
@The Red Pen:
Freepers are incapable of using or detecting Irony. So, sadly, s/he wrote that comment in earnest.
Which just makes it all the sweeter.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth:
Cripes, we’re still a week and a half from October, and the rats are STREAMING from the ship.
Comrade Mary
@Irving: Don’t pick on her! I love her for her name alone.
And fuck yeah — run up the score!
Make me a deal and make it straight
All signed and sealed I’ll take it
To Robert E. Lee I’ll show it
I hope and pray he don’t blow it ’cause
We’ve been around a long time just try try tryin’ to
Make make the big time…
sparrow
@jimPortlandOR: I would prefer the democrats come to be the right-wing party (that they already are) and we get a real socialist party to the left of them.
hahahaha, yeah, I am dreaming.
Corner Stone
@jwb: Professional bodybuilders try to cut down to 4% the day of the show.
I think I read somewhere that 6% on men begins to display the six pack of your ab muscles. But I’m sure that varies.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@? Martin: How’s Merriam Webster?
Definition of SUCCUBUS
: a demon assuming female form to have sexual intercourse with men in their sleep — compare incubus
Origin of SUCCUBUS
Middle English, from Medieval Latin, alteration of Latin succuba paramour, from succubare to lie under, from sub- + cubare to lie, recline.
It’s an easy enough mistake for the non-pedantic (i.e, most people)to make. The word geeks among us, however…
Punchy
@PeakVT: None of you are factoring in Voter ID laws, and absent those, what I expect many Republican SoSes to do: sew massive intentional confusion into the polling places.
Every single swing state that matters (at least that I can think of) is run by a Republican administration, and that’ll make an enormous difference.
schrodinger's cat
@Culture of Truth: Is Chocula a relative of Dracula? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
jwb
@danah gaz: I haven’t missed a vote, local, national, primary, bonds, etc. in twenty-five years.
catclub
@dmsilev: Orthogonal. Kristol thinks Romney should drop out so the real winning ticket of Ryan /Rubio
can run away with a victory.
It has the advantage that the generic republican always did better than any known candidate. I bet the GOP really wants to
just run that guy (Generic).
Itinerant pedant
@dmsilev:
Hey! He IS running his campaign like a business!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Corner Stone:
Ryan won’t lose his district. It’s not overwhelmingly red but it was made a bit more GOP-ey after redisctricting.
Last I read, he was up over the Dem (Zerban) by a 61-32 margin. Meanwhile, Rmoney outpolls Obama 53-41 there.
Just don’t see how, short of a pedophilia charge, Ryan doesn’t go back to Congress.
pseudonymous in nc
The House is going to be a tough one, because of all the wingnut state legislatures elected in 2010 that managed to shove through redistricting shit designed to misappropriate federal seats for a decade. All signs point to NC having a net R+1 or 2 in the House after November because of that.
But: those calculations in gerrymandering are based upon a fairly narrow turnout model, and it only takes one or two percentage points either way to upend that, especially if the R base is disillusioned by the end.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Full disclosure: I still expect the GOP to (at least try to) steal it. (On the assumption that a party brazen enough to openly pass voter suppression laws is almost certainly brazen enough to try and steal it). This is also (IMO) the real reason they keep pushing the false “Reagan came from behind! In October!” meme– as potential cover.
Obama up by only 1-2% in the Diebold swing states is still steal-able. But if the exit polls in the key swing states have Obama up by 8% or more on election day? I don’t think that would stand scrutiny.
Here’s hoping that the ‘Romney campaign as a sinking ship’ narrative will widen that gap to un-stealable margins.
redshirt
@quannlace: I’m not only the President of Hair Club for Growth, I’m also a client.
gene108
@nominus:
I don’t think Republicans want to be taking orders from Democrats (the only political moderates left), they’d rather go the way of the Whig party.
Paul
@Violet:
Not sure if that’s a big deal or not. Everybody in Utah knows that Romney will win Utah with at least 65% of the vote.
It is the same in every election in states like Utah. There is little need for campaigning (other than fundraising) for the Presidential candidates. The bigger stakes are in their local elections.
JustMe
@schrodinger’s cat: Getting to 10% or below with body fat is basically the holy grail of men’s fitness. It’s hard enough to do in your 20s. Doing it after 30? You’re not just exercising extremely vigorously, you’re eating such a strictly controlled diet that it will interfere with the sort of social life that politicians like to cultivate.
Corner Stone
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: MSNBC showed a poll today that had Obama up by several points on WI.
I’m just at the point where polling is irrelevant. That’s why I was asking if anyone had a feel for it in WI.
I’m pretty sure he’ll retain the seat but am curious if there’s a stumble factor that could be taken advantage of or if he’s bulletproof.
KG
@piratedan: Arizona, Nevada, and Montana are the Senate races that I’m wondering about, mostly. I don’t know how true it actually is, but there is a school of thought that says if the presidential race looks over early (say Ohio and Pennsylvania going early), then that could depress Republican vote out west and increase Democratic vote – it’s sort of a “we’ve already lost/let’s run up the score” thing.
Peej01
When Romney goes down to defeat, the Republicans arent going to return to sanity. They’ll just blame Mittens for not being sufficiently conservative and double down on the crazy. You can see it starting already amongst the winger commentariat.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Experience says that voter apathy from an obvious blowout election tends to hurt the losing side more than the winning side. Both sides may lose some voters to apathy, but the winning side has the benefit of extra energy from backing a winner, while the losing side winds up with depression from backing a loser.
jwb
@Corner Stone: I read on Twitter that Ryan has been making major ad buys and doing some in-district campaigning. Given his district, he’s probably not likely to lose, but it seems like he is nervous. I figure if he’s nervous, then the whole GOP machine has got to be close to melting down.
Mnemosyne
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Don’t forget, you can also commiserate with your wingnut neighbors about how awful Romney and Ryan are and see if you can convince them they should either do a protest vote (is Gary Johnson on your ballot?) or stay home altogether. Getting them to stay home or vote third party is almost as good as getting them to actively vote for Obama.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, I expect the village narrative to be the oh-so-predictable, “Had Ryan been at the top of the ticket….” Ryan will be happy to ride that pony just like Sarah(tm) did four years ago.
“Conservatism cannot fail….”
Willard will be happy to go spend some quality time with his
familymoney, annoy his rich neighbors and chase dope-smokers off the LaJolla beaches. I am curious what the church’s plans for him may be.Corner Stone
@Paul: Yeah, if Obama takes UT then start buying really warm clothing because it’s going to get extremely cold down below.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Violet: Utah has never been particularly demonstrative about voting for Republicans. It’s just sort of assumed. That said, though, it seems even more subdued than usual this time.
kuvasz
NO PRISONERS!
Turn the GOP into the Whigs.
thm
To run up the score, Dems need the evangelical voters to stay home and pray for the country on election day. We need some independent groups to be constantly reminding evangelical types that Romney is a Mormon and that Mormons maintain all sorts of beliefs that evangelicals should find horrifying.
eemom
Awesome sauce.
That is all.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Punchy:
__
If the race were looking closer than it is today then I would agree with you. But this is a high-risk strategy for the GOP because if they lose the election anyway, despite major ratfucking, the blowback could hurt them badly in future elections. If the general public gets the idea that the GOP just really isn’t into this whole small-d democracy thing, they’re done for. So at some point state level GOP officials will have to decide if they want to go all-in gambling on Romney winning or not. That’s why the loser-stink Romney is giving off now is important.
jwb
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Obama keeps 2010 from happening in 2014 by not fucking shutting down OfA again. That was the dumbest things he did, and among other things it meant that the database from 2008 was almost useless for the 2010 campaign. When I volunteered more than 75% of the phone numbers in the database were bad. That’s when I knew that the elections in 2010 were going to be very, very difficult.
OhioRiver
As long as the Republicans (corporate America) continues to run their candidate for pay then the Democrats have little to fear in regards to the White House.
However, if Obama loses then ‘run for the hills, Martha’ because it’s going to get ugly. Remember, it’s the founders of this country who rised up and took a stand and so should all of us. Left/Right, Rich/Poor, Black/White etc. we all have a lot in common & that is corrupt govt. needs to be defeated.
booksbyoliver.com
Great article! Thanks!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Mnemosyne:
The main problem with that is I’d have to talk with my neighbors. With some, we’re almost to the point of carrying guns around.
And as mentioned above, I’m a carpet bagging “outsider”. I tell them about any alternative and they’ll rush to the voting both to vote for Rmoney just because they’ll see it as some hoity-toity “outsider” telling them what to do.
The only thing I’d tell them to do is have a stroke or come down with a particularly painful form of cancer.
ding dong
Too much overconfidence here. It ain’t over till Money Boo Boo cries. Bonus points for our team if Incubus ends crying because he loses his seat.
schrodinger's cat
@Peej01: The crazier they get, the smaller they become, the crazy becomes more concentrated. Republicans need to lose a couple of election cycles really big for them to really turn a page and become more sane.
Paul
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not sure since a sizable portion of Democrats can’t be bothered to vote unless it is a Presidential year. Or as some did in 2010, they intentionally sit out the election as a protest vote against Obama. Yeah, that turned out really well…
Thus, it is very likely we will lose both the house and the senate in 2014.
trollhattan
ZOMG, Obama has lost the coveted Regis endorsement. Now, the house ‘o cards starts crumbling.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/regis-philbin-romney-47-percent-context.html
trollhattan
@Paul:
Are we forgetting 2006?
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat: And really, what position do they have to back off to? There is no middle ground from the anti-fact belief system they demand their candidates adhere to?
It’s like the Cole quote about compromising on dinner choices. They’ve been demanding, loudly, that their reps publicly and dog-whistley state just how much they believe tire rims are good for you.
Anoniminous
@pseudonymous in nc:
Exactly.
Off-year elections are base elections. Presidential election have an average of ten percent (IIRC) larger voter turn-out. This is the structural reason Presidential candidates have to move to pick up the
ignorantCenter. If the districts are gerrymandered to the nth degree for “normal” turn-out its likely an “abnormal” turn-out will flip more seats than would have been the case with the extreme gerrymandering. That is, essentially, what happened in 2008 when the Dems got seats they had no business flipping.Edited because FYWP
Tractarian
@Anoniminous:
Wow. The Senate polls are just looking better and better.
At this rate, the Dems might even gain seats in that chamber, which is something that was thought to be virtually impossible at the beginning of this cycle, given the number of seats Dems had to defend. (Remember, the senators that are up this year were last elected in 2006, a Dem wave year).
We could be seeing the fourth straight “wave” election. In which case, Republicans might want to practice saying “Madam Speaker” again.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: I guess this outcome was inevitable when Republicans ceded the leadership of their party to blowhards of talk radio and Fox News.
Paul
@trollhattan:
It is different when the incumbent President is from the other party.
It is kind of difficult to sit out the election as a protest vote when the incumbent President is from the other party. It doesn’t carry the same weight…
catclub
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: “If the Dems had held serve in the 2010 midterms it would not have been so bad,”
mmmmaybe. It would all depend on how the economy does in that world. Obama would 100% own whatever state the economy
is in. I am pretty sure Obama could have done more to help the economy without uniform opposition from the house, but who knows if it would be enough. PLus, Bernanke might easily have been back on the brakes. Bernanke should have been doing more to help the economy anyway, and is a likely own goal for Obama for appointing him.
Corner Stone
@Paul:
Sigh.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
Regis’ head would look much better on a pike than on his shoulders.
Just sayin’.
Anoniminous
@Tractarian:
Yup. This what Winning looks like.
“Winning,” tho’, doesn’t mean “Won.” Still a bunch of work to accomplish.
And speaking OF that, back to it.
Snarki, child of Loki
Stake through the heart, baby!
But use care when pounding in the stake, because the GOP heart is three sizes too small.
Paul
@trollhattan:
But that’s the thing; Mitt was not taken out of context. Heck, Mitt even defended his remark the following day.
I wonder if Philbin came to Obama’s defense when Romney used Obama’s build it quote completely out of context.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
And the potential turn-around with abnormal turnout is stronger the more extreme the gerrymandering. If you gerrymander a 50/50 state into 4 60/40 districts and 2 30/70 districts, it will probably be safe even with strong turnout. But if you try to get 5 54/46 districts and 1 30/70 district, you risk the other side running the table with very high turnout.
catclub
@jwb: It is my hope that Obama starts the permanent campaign to maintain his legacy very early. That means both 2014 and 2016 being heavily involved in the campaigns.
But who knows. Counting chickens at this point.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat:
Honestly I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
Because every board I go to seems to be infected with talking points. Just really absurd ones like the “apologizing” one and now “redistribution” and the other tried and true ones. And they simply can not be disabused of these beliefs. It seems the ones that used to only buy some of the crazy have gradually slipped into buying almost all the crazy.
So the question becomes, or maybe has always been, is Fox News driving the bus or just selling the people what they want to hear?
I think it used to be a mix. Fox saw a market, harnessed that market and then started to shape their propaganda. But they started with people who felt underserved and were distrustful to begin with.
Anyway.
WereBear
@The Dangerman: I’ll never forget Mr WayofCats saying, the night of the 2008 elections, “Let’s flip over to Fox.”
“What?!?” says I, three deep in the Irish whiskey by then.”Why?”
“To see the looks on their faces,” says he.
And we did, and lo! what a sight it was.
catclub
@Corner Stone: It would be funny if Obama starts out his victory speech thanking Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes for making all his opponents stupid and incompetent. AND for keeping him on his toes.
the Conster
My favorite part of yesterday was Tweety showing the Senate Republicans at the press microphone and then walking away from the podium en masse with the sound of 47% questions thrown at them. I love that they can’t defend Romney, and they look like cowards and sneaky little shits (which they are) when they don’t. Nothing’s better than Repukes in lose/lose mode. Heckuva job, Willard!
Soonergrunt
@Virginia Highlander:
Well, this IS Paul Ryan we’re talking about.
Paul
@Corner Stone:
The irony is that the folks that these words such as “apologizing” and “redistribution” seem to be too dumb to understand that Republican presidents did the same thing. Bush apologized. Heck, a quick google search revealed that Reagan apologized for actions of America.
And, of course, any type of tax results in redistribution. Last time I checked, Ronald Reagan didn’t object to at least some taxes. This means he was very much in favor redistribution.
But I digress. These folks were white Republicans and then anything seems to be OK.
Mnemosyne
@Punchy:
That’s gonna require a REALLY big needle and thread if you’re going to go around sewing people into polling places.
(I think you meant “sow.”)
Carolinus
Paul Ryan 2005 Atlas Society speech: “Social Security right now is a collectivist system, it’s a welfare transfer system.”
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=5368
Here’s the mp3 of his entire nutty, objectivist-jargon-filled speech:
http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Paul%20Ryan%20speech%202005%20Atlas%20Society.mp3
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Roger Moore:
Gerrymandering is a leveraged bet, just like a financial derivative. When it pays off you gain more than otherwise, but it can blow up in your face too.
FlipYrWhig
If the GOP completely gave itself over to the crazies, ISTM that the more conservative and business-friendly Democrats could form a Blue Dog Party that officially decoupled from the Dems. Then the Eisenhower Republicans who are now nominally Democrats (like McCaskill or even Mark Warner) could be the right-of-center party, and Democrats could be the left-of-center party, and Republicans would be an extremist rump supported by 27% of the public. Some states would end up with more of a Blue Dog/Republican mix, with few Democrats, and some states would end up with more of a Blue Dog/Democrat mix, with few Republicans. And the Blue Dogs would be in the Anthony Kennedy role, swinging slightly left or right based on circumstances and whims, determining the outcome of policy debates and the shapes of laws. (I think this is pretty much what we have now, only it happens entirely within the fold of the Democratic party.)
chopper
looks like mittens is gonna have to don some more self-tanner to get his numbers up.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: This “redistribution” rap is truly stupid, because it is in no way an objectionable statement — unless you think the very word “redistribution” is an obscenity, like just uttering it marks you as someone with a bad character and a warped mind.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
If he saved another Olympics, he could catapault right back into America’s heart.
schrodinger's cat
@chopper: Yes I have been noticing that too, he is looking Boehneresque these days. I wonder whether it is spray tan or Scotch? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
I can’t tell you how many times it appears. Usually with some variant of Robin Hood in the comment somewhere.
amk
When did you get into mind-reading, Dennis ?
kindness
Anyone else like Crooks & Liars? They’ve got a killer video up called Hitler Finds Out About Romney’s Secret Video.
It’s really funny. Even better though, who saw Jon Stewart’s Bullshit Mountain?
Jon can explain things better than any politician I have ever heard. This clip needs to be played over and over and over.
Nethead Jay
Getting Nancy SMASH! back in charge of the House should be the absolute first priority and I believe it’s possible. But the Senate is really important because we need to think long-term. If Harry Read and the other drag-asses are to be persuaded to really do something about the filibuster we need to have a fairly comfortable majority and to already be thinking about the midterm elections in 2014. And the map for those isn’t looking easy: See here. I see at least 3-4 vulnerabilities there and only one possible pickup.
So if we could have E. Warren in Mass., Carmona in Arizona, Shelly Berkley in Nevada and Donnelly in Indiana pick up seats, that would be fantastic.
FormerSwingVoter
Where do I donate to help with the House races? The more seats we pick up there, the better.
J. Michael Neal
@KG:
More likely the other way. This became an issue after the 1980 election when the networks called the presidential race for Reagan before the polls closed on the west coast. There was a lot of complaints that this made Democrats less likely to turn out in those states where the polls were still open and affected down ballot races.
ABC News hired my father to conduct a study on that. Interestingly, the reason they picked him is almost certainly because he’d publicly stated that he thought it unlikely that the early calling had had any effect, which is the result ABC clearly wanted. He found that that wasn’t the case, and then got into a legal fight with ABC over whether he was contractually allowed to publish the study if they didn’t like the results. (He did.)
However, he found two things:
1) The effect was pretty damned small, though it was statistically significant, and
2) While all voters were less likely to turn out after the presidential race was called, this effect was more pronounced among Republicans than Democrats. It appears that the declared winners were more likely to stay home than the declared losers, contrary to the pre-study hypothesis.
So, it’s unlikely that the effect would tip any particular race, but if it is, it would probably make a Carmona win less likely.
Maude
@Corner Stone:
Can Republican say the word redistribution? If so, can they spell it?
jgaugust
By the way, I hope everyone here watched the last 4 minutes of Stewart’s opening segment from last night’s DS. One of the all-time great takedowns of everything wrong with wingnut logic. Just absolutely outstanding.
I also fully support using the term Bullshit Mountain here on B-J. I think it fits quite nicely in our lexicon.
jgaugust
@kindness: You got here 2 minutes before I did. Damn. Nicely done.
Lee
Another observation bit.
I live in wingnut red north texas. 4 years ago my Obama sign was the only one in my subdivision (still is). There were at least half a dozen McCain signs and another half dozen other republican signs.
So far this year I have seen ONE Romney sign and NO other signs.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@chopper:
__
Romney problem: not getting enough sunshine
Romney solution: ask Clint Eastwood to go outside and yell at the clouds
Rob in Buffalo
I nominate this for the best short blog post ever.
jwb
@FlipYrWhig: As long as the 27% exists, that arrangement would always be unstable, because the center right party would always be in a position to be acquired by the 27%, which will always be able to be a functional majority of any right party. The rump would have to be whittled down to about 15% in order for the center right party not be continually threatened by the rump.
the Conster
@jgaugust:
Seriously – Jon’s video researchers are amazing. That last clip with Craig T. Nelson is just – it’s gobsmacking. My other favorite part was a little dig at the demographics of Hannity v. Jon’s show. Spiking the ball FTW!
trollhattan
@WereBear:
Beautiful (sniff). A week, week-and-a-half out from ’08 I finally relaxed and allowed the reality of Obama’s imminent win to wash away eight years of chronic horror. I think it was mailing in my ballot that triggered it. It felt so great I tried to talk wife.gov down from the cliff of election anxiety, but she wouldn’t/couldn’t and remained jittery to the end.
Watching the returns and finding out how sweeping they were was one of the greatest nights of my life.
KG
@J. Michael Neal: ah, cool, good to know, thanks. I remember there being some discussion in my PoliSci classes when I was in college in the mid-90s, I just don’t remember how they turned out.
amk
@the Conster: He really killed it in that segment. (not a js fan, more of a colbear one)
danah gaz
@kindness: It’s been a hilarious couple of days. MoJo’s servers are probably creaking under the massive load of wingnut trollswarm butthurt as well.
I really want Romney to say something else. I could use another good laugh.
ETA: There’s these from the onion, as well: http://www.theonion.com/articles/romney-apologizes-to-nations-150-million-starving,29603/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/romney-campaign-sends-in-champion-of-the-poor-paul,29608/
not to mention #missing2min at twitter.
The lulz are everywhere. =)
bemused
Speaking of House races, I sincerely hope we can kick Chip Cravaack out of my district. I just watched a video of a very rare townhall he had on Monday praising Paul Ryan and saying about GOP/Ryan Medicare plan, It’s really not a voucher, it’s “premium care”. Seriously, he really said that.
We’ve got a good Dem candidate running, Rick Nolan. He has served before so he has experience. I met him and he seems super eager to unseat Chip and get to work.
Josie
@FormerSwingVoter: There is an a FP post on DKos that lets you click through to ask your representatives in safe districts to contribute to Dems who need help. After you fill that out, it brings up a page from which you can contribute personally to particular campaigns.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/19/1134051/-Wait-safe-House-Democrats-are-sitting-on-how-much-money
trollhattan
In the meantime, Benen finds Chris Christie starting his 2016 campaign by stumping for…Steve King. Way to go capture the center, whaleboy.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/20/13989567-why-christie-is-cozying-up-to-king?lite
John O
My personal bell ringer will be one Joe Walsh, a single district away from me in IL.
If HE wins, the Dems have a bad night. He’s really a crazy dick.
Persia
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: There’s a company that has a “We built this” sign on my way to work. I’m so tempted to sneak out there in the middle of the night and add “conveniently located on a state highway.”
flukebucket
Just win baby!
sacrablue
@trollhattan: I watched the election returns that night from the campaign office of a congressional candidate (you can probably guess which one). Seeing tears stream down the faces of so many older white men was one of the best days of my life.
quannlace
MSNBC destroyed this RW bete-noire. Redistribution is how the government has always worked. You don’t want redistribution, you have to have a zero tax rate. But you also want working roads, clean water, any military? Tough!
To wingnuts, the ‘r’ word means taking money from decent, hardworking people like themselves and giving to undeserving, lazy moochers.
Maude
@trollhattan:
I feel the familiar tension as we get closer to election day. It’s the Congress as well as president.
danielx
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s the only way. Crush ’em like a grape and they might finally get the idea that God just might not be on their side. That God does, in fact, regard them as a bunch of fucking hypocrites.
Hey, I can dream, right?
FlipYrWhig
@jwb: I take your point, but since the left/right distribution isn’t uniform across the country, I feel like that’s less likely. Some places have so few liberals that there could be room for two ideologically right-of-center options — for instance, culture warriors vs. business coddlers. So in some locales the “Blue Dog” party would be the (relatively) more liberal option, and in others it would be the (relatively) more conservative option. Consider Lamont vs. Lieberman vs. Schlesinger, or Miller vs. Murkowski vs. McAdams.
The risk is the kind of thing that happened in Maine that got LePage elected.
danielx
@John O:
He would be that stalwart defender of family values who owed a hundred grand in unpaid child support?
Amir Khalid
@John O:
Let’s hope the Joe Walsh who prevails in that House race is the much more famous one, the guitar player, who has endorsed (and campaigned for) Tammy Duckworth.
The Red Pen
@dmsilev:
Kristol chastised the comments as “arrogant” but equated it to Obama’s “bitter clinger” comments.
While I think Obama’s actual comments were empathetic and not contemptuous, Kristol might not be off in terms of how the public perceived the remarks. What he doesn’t take into account is that Obama had margin to make mistakes and Romney does not.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Oh, I know. But this particular Obama statement they’re flogging hard right now is a common sense view of how government works — pooling resources to give vulnerable people a fair shake. It just happens to contain a red-flag word like “redistribution.” IMHO it’s even less incriminating than “spread the wealth around.” That line, to me, sounds a lot more like it involves active confiscation, which is what conservatives want each other to think “redistribution” means. But this quote doesn’t smack of that, at least not to me, and I think not to anyone who understands that the government collects money to help people in trouble.
jibeaux
@Lee: Have you seen the movie Bernie? Do you live in the panhandle where they drew the big question mark? I’ve been wondering ever since I saw that. Or the Dallas part?
Culture of Truth
He should leave Jamie Farr out of this
Culture of Truth
and drink their whine
jibeaux
@FlipYrWhig: It’s kind of sad. A 1998 video? Jesus, go back to Solyndra and the TelePrompTer bits.
jwb
GOP jockeying to save the filibuster, at least that’s how I would interpret this piece.
Svensker
@Corner Stone:
They’re all wigged out about “communism” and “Marxism”. My brother and the wingnut rellies are always railing on about it. Course, they’re old white guys and have no understanding that folks under the age of 50 don’t have any gut reaction to those words. For them, those were the defining fears of a generation of Americans and the fact that no one else knows what they’re babbling about doesn’t sink in.
AHH onna Droid
@? Martin: From that august authority South Park, a succubus is “a woman who sucks the life out of a man.”
qwerty42
@Peej01:
Larrison has some pretty good comments on what he expects; he has several, most posted today, but the link is just for one of them.
ericblair
@danielx:
Seems that there are cycles of participation of fundies in American politics. It goes from disengagement to a full-blown concentrated battle to take back America for Jeebus, followed by disillusionment and back to disengagement from the worldly, sinful political process. We need to help things along to get ’em back to the hibernation phase.
dmsilev
@jibeaux: The doublethink is truly impressive. It’s unfair to Romney and Ryan to omit 2 minutes out of an hour-long speech and anything from a couple of years ago is completely unjustified. Meanwhile, it’s perfectly fine to take an Obama speech from 14 years ago, edit the living shit out of it, remove all context, and proudly scream “Look at the gaffe!”.
I know IOKIYAR, but aren’t they supposed to at least *try* for some hint of plausibility?
Strontium 90
@Peej01: Maybe, but my belief is that economy will improve quite a bit in the next 4 years even if the GOP tries to stand in the way. If that happens, it will be hard to keep that level of insanity up…
Cuppa Cabana
Mr Wang at Princeton has one of those if-election-were-held-today poll (index) showing the Dems could take 30 seats (THIRTY) and win back House.
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/20/house-outlook-for-2013-take-2/
I think that’s a long shot but a girl can dream.
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not exactly. Gerrymandering is about picking the level of leverage you’re accepting. You can gerrymander to reduce risk and produce as many safe seats as possible. That’s exactly what happened here in California in the last round of redistricting, which is why only one Congressional seat changed parties in the last decade. On the flip side, if you create as many competitive districts as possible, you can increase the impact of swings in partisan mood. Intermediate forms of gerrymandering (e.g. the 4x 60/40 and 2x 30/70 example) reduce the up-side of a partisan swing (it’s going to be nearly impossible to go above 4 seats) and the down-side (it will take a really drastic swing against you to go much below 4).
MCA1
@trollhattan: I think there’s something to that – I was nervous as a tick in ’08 until Election Day itself. Walking to the polling station, I put on my headphones, turned on Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” and got a little misty when it dawned on me that we were turning the page that day. Casting my vote was the act that replaced my dread with confidence. The rest of the day was just filled with mirth, knowing that the result of the election was going to be everything I’d hoped for.
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Too bad for him that Chicago lost its bid for the 2016 Olympics and the USOC doesn’t see any chance of us bidding for another round or two. The next chance for there to be an Olympics for him to save won’t be until he’s way too old to be running for President.
sparrow
@J. Michael Neal: This makes sense to me. People voting late in the day, in any case, are probably doing so because they have to (i.e., they work) or because they are strangely non-committal about it in the first place. If I hear that Obama wins & I’m stuck in traffic or whatever, I might say “Well, good enough, we won” & turn around. If Mittens is pronounced the winner, though, I might feel like “damn, maybe they’re wrong… I’m still going to vote just in case”.
catclub
@danah gaz: “#missing2min”
remember when the cobra was missing at the Bronx Zoo, and tweeted from all over the city? I think of those missing two minutes like that.
Hill Dweller
Kessler gave the “redistribution” nonsense four Pinocchios.
Cmm
Redistribution is a buzzword that denotes communism/socialism and has been since the red scare of the 1950s. It is one of those things that “proves’ Obama is a socialist. that’s why they love finding a recording of him actually saying the word, even if it is from 1998…to them that is a Q.E.D. end of discussion.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@jwb: Good Christ. If Schumer believes one word of that crap he is the biggest idiot alive. And the linked piece sure reads like he believes it.
McConnell was very upfront the day Obama was sworn in. There can be no misconstruing or misunderstanding when he said that the GOPs only goal was to make Obama a one-term president, period. If he’s a moderate than the term “moderate” has lost all meaning.
Kill the filibuster, Harry. Fucking kill it and bury it. Let the Republicans scream. You’d be doing American democracy the biggest favor anyone has done for it in decades.
catclub
@Strontium 90: “it will be hard to keep that level of insanity up…”
Someone who believes the wingularity can be approached?
Or is finite?
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
They do not give a flying fuck what the reality based community thinks about them.
They’re going for low-info mushy middle types. They think they can pull them to their side with this. Furthermore, they’re reading their own press clippings at NRO, American Spectator, the NY Post, and listening to their own bullshit on Limbaugh’s show and on Faux.
They’re so far in the bubble, they can’t think objectively or critically, at all.
If the situations were reversed, they wouldn’t be, as many here are about Rmoney, commenting on how inept “Obambi” is. They’d simply chalk that up to him being a stupid ni*CLANG* and leave it at that…not even an attempt to try to figure out what the problem might be.
As I’ve mentioned before, they are case studies for Sun Tzu to point to and give as examples. BAD examples.
Soonergrunt
@Roger Moore: There won’t be another Olympics in the USA until the USOC agrees to a more generous revenue-sharing plan with the IOC.
Since Mitt isn’t one to part with a dime unless he’s got a gun to his head, I don’t think he can help much here, either.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
No. SATSQ.
Roger Moore
@danah gaz:
Should we start a #missing18.5min as a counter, or would too few people get it?
Villago Delenda Est
@danah gaz:
I want Cravaack’s still living body used to grease the treads of a Democratic Abrams tank, if only because I live in Oregon and I keep seeing his mug pop up in GoogleAds on multiple sites.
sacrablue
@sparrow: This is why the electorate needs to be educated. The down-ballot races are equally important. I volunteered for what turned out to be a losing congressional campaign because all of those newly registered young voters for Obama didn’t think about voting for the rest of the ticket. They mailed in their ballots before our canvassers reminded them to vote for Democratic candidate for congress as well as state offices.
jwb
@Forum Transmitted Disease: The good news is that to be talking this way suggests that the GOP has clearly entered total freakout mode. The bad news is that Schumer at least doesn’t seem to have learned the lessons of the last four years.
Matt McIrvin
@JustMe: When I was a teenager in college, I took some kind of electrical body-fat test that measured me as having an incredibly low percentage, somewhere below 10%.
I wasn’t tremendously healthy, though, I was skin and bone and had just gone through a massive growth spurt that left me looking like a walking hatrack. I had no muscles. (And the number may well have been spurious anyway.)
I’m about Paul Ryan’s age and now I start to develop a gut whenever I don’t watch myself, so those days are long-gone…
catclub
@Roger Moore: Rose Mary Woods, would. They say gymnastics are only for the young. I guess she was young at heart.
Shawn in ShowMe
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
1) Pass the jobs bill with Democratically controlled Congress
2) Health care employment increases sharply to meet the influx of new customers
3) Electric vehicles become commonplace and green tech hiring begins in earnest
4) 500,000 jobs created each month leading up to the midterm elections
5) Profit!!
MCA1
@jwb: Whether or not Schumer falls for that transparent bullshit doesn’t matter all that much. It’s whether or not Reid does. And given that Reid seems to have recently stumbled upon his old boxing gloves, which he’d misplaced somewhere under his bed for about 6 years, I’m fairly confident he’ll see right through it. I don’t know about Durbin, I guess – he doesn’t seem the type to encourage Harry to go ahead and play the filibuster card, anyway. Especially if the House is still Republican-led (should I use quotation marks around the word “led” in that instance?)
In the end, what McConnell says now is immaterial. If Obama’s still in the White House and Reid’s still the Speaker come January, we’ll just have to see up close how the Turtle and his Merry Band of Naysayers actually act.
Which is why I think Schumer’s just trying to throw some firecrackers at the feet of the Republicans right now, and see how much internecine war he can stir up.
catclub
@Shawn in ShowMe: Replace Ben Bernanke.
rdldot
I don’t trust any predictions this far out, and even if they are right the polls only count as polls. It’s who goes to actually vote that matters and between the voter ID laws and various other tactics being played we better get as many people out there as humanly possible. It’s still going to be a ground game win for either side. It better be us.
kindness
The filibuster…it’s only recently that I have come to favor shit canning the filibuster. It used to be I liked it. It used to be rare that it was needed. I guess what turned me was when Republicans started acting like a Parlimentary system in the Senate. By forcing (and I didn’t see much arm twisting from the the members involved) every member of your party to vote no on any Democratic initiative, they lost me.
So I will support straight forward majority rule even though I know it will one day bite me in the ass.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Soonergrunt: How bout a world’s fair then. We haven’t hosted one in a long time. God damn I’d vote for Romney if he could pull off a successful fair. That’s actually hard.
kindness
The filibuster…it’s only recently that I have come to favor shit canning the filibuster. It used to be I liked it. It used to be rare that it was needed. I guess what turned me was when Republicans started acting like a Parlimentary system in the Senate. By forcing (and I didn’t see much arm twisting from the the members involved) every member of your party to vote no on any Democratic initiative, they lost me.
So I will support straight forward majority rule even though I know it will one day bite me in the ass.
Soonergrunt
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace: I’d vote for him to be permanently in charge of the World’s Fair, but not anything else.
Dr. Loveless
Someone was saying they were disappointed that Mittens hadn’t stepped on his own dick in the last couple of days. Looks like maybe his makeup people stepped on it for him.
Mitt Brownface.
The Other Chuck
This reminds me of a thread that Markos posted on his GOS, titled “Break Their Backs”. Mind you, this was _after_ the 2008 election. Then we ended up with 2010.
Before the election is definitely the appropriate time to whip up the bloodlust. I’m eager to screw Republicans into the ground so hard this year that we can use them as a substitute for fracking fluid.
jwb
@MCA1: That’s an interesting read. Hope you are right. I admit that I don’t entirely trust Schumer.
Mowgli
@trollhattan:
Obama’s inauguration fell on my 39th birthday. I took the day off and had a small gathering of san friends and family over for the only such celebratory gathering within miles (I live in Tom Price’s district north of Atlanta– a.k.a. ConserviTard Central), and we all cried at various points during the ceremony. Seeing Cheney show up as Mr. Potter looking amazingly constipated and bitter only made his bitter tears more delicious. Watching the Bush family leave via helicopter was an amazing moment as well.
kindness
Sorry about the double post. Wasn’t sure and went elsewhere.
Zippity
@danah gaz: That sounds just like my brother. In 2008, he wished that there would be a depression and I lose my job and my house,when he found out I was supporting Obama in the primaries. Since I obviously thought the government should take care of me. This from a career military officer-who got both undergrad and masters degrees with Uncle Sam (me and you) picking up the tab. I told him that one of us gets money from the government, and it isn’t me. We didn’t speak for over a year.
gene108
@The Other Chuck:
Markos, et. al. didn’t help by pissing all over Obamacare, when it finally got passed because of no public option.
What the Left DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE RIGHT is that right-wingers are Terminators. Kyle Reese could be talking about the modern conservative movement, when he said, “Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”
I’d just substitute the “you are dead” part with until the .01% have all your money.
Privatizing Social Security failed miserably in 2005, so what do they do in 2012? How about privatizing Medicare, as a starting point to privatize Social Security.
The Bush Tax Cuts* drove up the deficit, so what do they propose? More tax cuts, specifically targeted at millionaires.
I’m just saying, I don’t know how to beat the snot out of the Republicans, because the billionaires that back them have an ideological axe to grind and don’t lose sleep over throwing millions into fueling their ideology.
All the right-wing rags started in the 1980’s, that drove the Clinton-era scandals, lose money but their wingnut billionaire backers are willing to pay the price to this day, so they can tilt the playing field in their favor.
As long as those guys don’t care about losing money for the bigger fight about, who controls America, it’s going to take more than a couple of elections to really put Republicans on their heals and have them honestly^ disassociate from the crazy-train.
*I give Bush & Co. this much credit, when they crafted their tax cut, they gave everyone a cut, but made sure the upper class folks got the biggest cut. Romney & Co. aren’t that clever.
^I can see plenty of them paying lipservice to moderation, but I don’t see anyone actually making an effort to get off the crazy-train. When you have billionaires throwing millions at you to stay on the crazy-train, it’s hard to want to get off.
ruemara
@jwb: OFA did not shut down. Where does this zombie lie come from?
Chuck Butcher
I know, blogwhoring, but this 47% tape means spit.
jwb
@ruemara: Yes, and what did OfA do exactly before they started to ramp up for 2010? The organization may have technically existed, but it organized nothing, especially during the summer of 2009, when it might have done some serious good countering the Tea Party nonsense.
Lee
@jibeaux:
Yeah that clip is great.
The Dallas part. Texans typically refer to North Texas as the area around Dallas/Fort Worth.
The question mark is ‘the panhandle’. I grew up just south of the panhandle in West Texas (Midland) and the question mark pretty much fits.
elftx
Just imagine VA losing the “redistribution” of Federal Defense spending bwhahahahha
That’s what I am telling people..of course there is so much more but I figure give them that analogy because USA USA !!!
danah gaz
@Zippity: You must have hit a nerve. If that’s the case, at least he gave it some thought. =/
Josie
Wow, I leave to go do my errands and come back to see my name in lights, so to speak. Thanks for the h/t, Soonergrunt (my first ever).
TTT
My favorite Kos line from the ’08 election still rings true:
“BREAK THEIR BACKS, CRUSH THEIR SPIRITS.”