"A black sheriff?!": The Official Topic of Obama and New Era American Politics

[TakingBackSunday]

pd you magnificent beautiful motherfucker

you're on fire at gaf

[Brehvolution]

I saw this years ago and never could find it. It just popped up again.

[Joe Molotov]

It's going to be very difficult coming to terms with the upcoming Obama loss.

Yeah, his fantasy football team isn't very good.

[Joe Molotov]

http://www.ap.org/content/press-release/2012/ap-photo-of-romney-visit-to-virginia-school

lol



CLARIFIES THAT STUDENT IS REACTING BECAUSE MITT ROMNEY WILL BE POSING FOR A PHOTO DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF HER AND HER CLASSMATES - Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney poses for photographs with students of Fairfield Elementary School, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Fairfield, Va. A student, right, reacts as she realizes Romney will crouch down directly in front of her and her classmates for the group photo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Thank you Associated Press, for making us laugh at love again.

[Himu]

rofl

[Barry Egan]

Andrew Sullivans meltdown over Obamas debate performance is The Worst Thing.  You've been following this stuff for how long and you don't know to wait at least an entire week before crumbling in to hysteria?

[Mandark]

I'm glad I never read Sullivan, so I didn't have that inevitable year-long period of typing his blog's URL into the address bar out of sheer habit (see: neoGAF).

[Human Snorenado]

I've pretty much cut my political intake down to 3 things:  TPM, 538, and the indispensable Balloon Juice.  Every couple of weeks for shits n giggles I'll give Sullivan an hour or two of my life, just to reaffirm that he really still IS an austerity loving drama queen with a boner for the President's "Burkean sensibilities and Oakeshottian tendencies" whatever the fuck that is.

[Yeti]

What is going on with these polls saying Romney is beating Obama now?

[Human Snorenado]

What is going on with these polls saying Romney is beating Obama now?

Part of it is that Romney has, in fact, gotten a bounce from last week's debate.  The rest of it is that somehow magically there are now more Republicans responding as a percentage of the polls than there were last week.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I think Obama is still in good shape.  I think Biden is going to have a difficult time so Obama needs to kill it in the last two debates to stem the tide.

[Phoenix Dark]

Biden will embarrass himself just watch

What is going on with these polls saying Romney is beating Obama now?

Part of it is that Romney has, in fact, gotten a bounce from last week's debate.  The rest of it is that somehow magically there are now more Republicans responding as a percentage of the polls than there were last week.

Eh that's due to party ID being a fluctuating factor, unlike race, ethnicity, etc. Independent voters tend to stay from party to party depending on who is up/down, and after the debate they moved to Romney.

If Obama loses it's solely his fault for not giving a shit about the debate

[Human Snorenado]

Fortunately, there are 2 more debates; foreign policy is the last one and should be a cinch, and the one before that is a town hall where the Mitttron 3000 will have to interact with the plebe class.

[Barry Egan]

What is going on with these polls saying Romney is beating Obama now?

A poll from a fairly respected outfit has Romney ahead by 4 nationally among likely voters.  Fortunately, elections are won electorally and Obama remains ahead in many key battleground states, albeit with a much diminished lead. 

Within those battleground states, it looks as though he basically lost his post-convention bounce.  But to put that in context, post-convention leads usually fade after a week or so.  For a bunch of reasons, Obama's bump stuck around for weeks and only metastasized when that video of Romney saying things rich people say to each other in private was leaked.  At that point in the race Obama was leading by like ten or eleven points in Ohio.  Now he's ahead three.  We're back to where things were projected to be if Romney ran a competent campaign out the gate.  Which I must admit diminishes my schadenfreude boner but only a tad. 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Biden will embarrass himself just watch

What is going on with these polls saying Romney is beating Obama now?

Part of it is that Romney has, in fact, gotten a bounce from last week's debate.  The rest of it is that somehow magically there are now more Republicans responding as a percentage of the polls than there were last week.

Eh that's due to party ID being a fluctuating factor, unlike race, ethnicity, etc. Independent voters tend to stay from party to party depending on who is up/down, and after the debate they moved to Romney.

If Obama loses it's solely his fault for not giving a shit about the debate

The not giving a crap about the debate is a good point. The paper had a good article on how little Obama has interacted with the press and hasn't had much pressure to prepare for the debate:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-president-obama-doesnt-meet-the-press/2012/10/04/ac688c8a-0e78-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html

[Phoenix Dark]

The general feel I got was people assumed Romney would simply melt once his bullshit was questioned by Obama in a debate. Yet...Obama didn't question or even fight back, he just sat there and took it. I watched a bit of the 2004 debate and Bush was clearly outclassed but was combative and aggressive. Obama literally threw the debate lol

[Human Snorenado]

I'll be more worried if things are the same/worse closer to the election.  As it is now, I still think Obama can win pretty easily, but he as to at least bring a fucking B game, not that shit he pulled at the debate.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I'll be more worried if things are the same/worse closer to the election.  As it is now, I still think Obama can win pretty easily, but he as to at least bring a fucking B game, not that shit he pulled at the debate.

Remember the Bush/Gore debates in 2000? Gore did that insufferable smirk and eye-rolling. Obama had kind of the same condescension going on but maybe not quite as bad.

[MIMIC]

My mom is losing her shit. She has been in Chris Matthews-mode for the last 2 days.

"I'm not even wearing my Obama button anymore. Romney is gonna win." It's hilarious.

Obama is gonna win. I'm 80% sure of it And even if he doesn't, at least it won't be Bush again. I wanted him gone so bad that it hurt. Romney at least is competent and that's a decent consolation.

[Human Snorenado]

uhhhh

If you think that competent people will be running the government under Romney, you have another thing coming to you

[Himu]

Romney has the same advisers bush had.

[TakingBackSunday]

Romney competent, lol

Obama still got dis shit.  Obama is winning Ohio, and without Ohio, Romney is pretty much facefucked.

[Mandark]

Romney's rep now is similar to Dubya's in 2000: did a good job as governor, more moderate than the GOP crazies who had been hogging the spotlight (Gingrich and the congressional GOP in the late 90's, the Tea Party in the 10's), willing to be bipartisan and surrounded by seasoned professionals in any case.

But Romney never repudiated Bush while he was in office, hasn't offered seriously different campaign planks (lower taxes, tough on terror!), and is drawing a ton of his advisers and probably future staff from ex-Bushies.  It wouldn't be an absolute carbon copy (probably), but there'd be a ton of overlap.

[MIMIC]

Romney has the same advisers bush had.

Hmm. I didn't know that.

I just got a little more concerned about the election, lol. I kinda stopped following politics hardcore once Obama was elected because my main concerns were foreign policy and healthcare and Obama was my guy (looooonnng before he was bandwagoned  ). Hopefully Obama wins so I won't have to worry too much about what potentially crazy thing the guy in charge is gonna do. I mean, I still have my eye on Obama (and the mantra about Iran is starting to feel a bit familiar) but I'm not too concerned. YET, at least.

But don't get me wrong: it would be a bad thing for Romney to take the reins.

Romney competent, lol

Facts/issues notwithstanding, he DID manage to bitch smack Obama in the debate. I'd say it's something to make the President look inferior, especially someone of Obama's stature. It'll be interesting to see how Obama regroups in the town hall debate.

[Phoenix Dark]

Good lord the polling looks horrible for Obama. What a fuckup

[TakingBackSunday]

Good lord the polling looks horrible for Obama. What a fuckup

The polling is concerning, but come on Maurice, the math man.  The EC math.

[Phoenix Dark]

Losing in Virginia, losing in Florida, losing in Colorado...and Ohio is tightening.

[ToxicAdam]

You know what else is tightening? My pants.

[Trurl]

My mom is losing her shit. She has been in Chris Matthews-mode for the last 2 days.

"I'm not even wearing my Obama button anymore. Romney is gonna win." It's hilarious.

Obama is gonna win. I'm 80% sure of it And even if he doesn't, at least it won't be Bush again. I wanted him gone so bad that it hurt. Romney at least is competent and that's a decent consolation.

Really?  When Obama is doing really well I can afford to pretend that I'm above the president.  Now that things have tightened significantly I have an Obama magnet on my car.  Your mom is doing things backwards.

[Mandark]

Not sure if PD's trolling, or has just switched over to his NBA thread posting technique ("god what a choker LeBron is") in preparation for the new season.

[Rusty Shackleford]

You guys ever read The Economist? Great British finance/business/news magazine. Socially moderate but fiscally conservative/libertarian. Their Lexington columnist (http://www.economist.com/topics/lexington) is a Brit who lives in DC and writes about American politics. It's an interesting non-American perspective.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I had to stop reading Sully when he became God-Emperor of Drama Queens, but he is right in one way: Romney, suddenly, is the centrist in this election. His latest reboot has him taking positions that would have been anathema to his base only 3 weeks ago. What's more, now that he finally has a non-zero chance of winning, the base is staying remarkably silent. It's as if they know their positions are untenable and unwinnable, so would rather win first and figure put their positions later. It's crass, it's gross, and it's working.

[Oblivion]

I think it was Chris Matthews who made a good point yesterday, where he said that Romney's using his flip flopping in a more clever and more cynical way. Romney himself goes on T.V. and says something like his insurance plan covers pre-existing conditions, as he did in the first debate. Then, a random campaign flak comes out and "clarifies" Romney's comment to mean the exact opposite of what he meant. 70 million people watched the debate. How many saw the article about Eric Ferhnstrom walking back Romney's remarks?

At first I thought this was just Romney being utterly incompetent, but this seems to be an intentional and seemingly, effective strategy.

[Dickie Dee]

[Joe Molotov]

Bill Clinton was giving it to Romney on this in his speech yesterday in Vegas.



I can't find a longer version of the speech online, but he was like "Ol' Moderate Mitt, glad to see ya buddy, where ya been for the past two years?"

[tiesto]

The October 16 debate is gonna be fairly close to where I live, is it possible to get tickets you guys know?

[Barry Egan]

The October 16 debate is gonna be fairly close to where I live, is it possible to get tickets you guys know?

All of the tickets allocated to Hofstra University from the Commission on Presidential Debates will be distributed to current students in the days before the debate, as recommended by the CPD and consistent with past practices of debate hosts, including Hofstra in 2008.

[ToxicAdam]

Hah that gif is great.

I took Sullivan out of my daily reading quite awhile ago. I liked the variety in his blog, but his penchant to freak out or get indignant over small things was too tiresome.

[Human Snorenado]

moar good Sully meltdown gifs

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/andrew-sullivans-obama-meltdown-in-8-key-gifs

[Dickie Dee]

I'm always hesitant to call him a drama queen as I'm unsure if that's being sorta homophobic or not, but christ what a drama queen

[Himu]

[Phoenix Dark]

@mpoindc : NBC/WSJ/Marist — VA: Romney 48, Obama 47 || FL: Obama 48, Romney 47 || OH**: Obama 51, Romney 45 (LVs, 10/7-9, MoE +/- 3.1%) 1 minute ago more »

Ohio is sort of looking like a firewall for Obama so far. We'll see

[TakingBackSunday]

VA and FL surprise me.  Thought it woulda been visa versa.

[brawndolicious]

I think the vp debate will make republicans stop answering the phones so much and the town hall is pretty much going to expose Romney's perpetual flip-flop machine. The questions are more specific and you can't just spew out talking point porn.

I'm optimistic that there'll be a dip for Romney. Foreign policy isn't usually a big concern for voters but it will be if Obama attacks Romney's positions on Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan, nobody wants to increase military intervention especially after the whole arab spring showed it's not even necessary. Unlike taxes or medicare, it's harder to stretch the facts on war-mongering.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I don't have high hopes for the VP debate for Biden.  Ryan is a sociopath and an asshole who won't hesitate to go for the jugular.  Biden might get a nice hit here and there but he'll have plenty of "hanging out at the Home Depot" moments as well.

[Great Rumbler]

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to a 4-1/2 year low last week, suggesting that hiring may be picking up after stalling since the spring.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new jobless claims dropped a seasonally-adjusted 30,000 to 339,000, the lowest since February 2008. The four-week moving average, considered a more accurate gauge of labor market conditions, slid 11,500 to 364,000.

[Dickie Dee]

I don't have high hopes for the VP debate for Biden.  Ryan is a sociopath and an asshole who won't hesitate to go for the jugular.  Biden might get a nice hit here and there but he'll have plenty of "hanging out at the Home Depot" moments as well.

Might as well post this here too:

The Zombie-Eyed Granny-Starver Takes on the One Man Who Relishes This Mess: Your 2012 VP Debate Preview
By Charles P. Pierce at 9:07AM
 
One of the oddest reactions to the president's feather-in-the-gales-of-pure-bullshit performance last week is the notion among a number of very smart liberal humans that he doesn't want to be president anymore and, way out on the fringe, the corollary that his debate demeanor was the rhetorical equivalent of Eddie Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox hitting the first Cincinnati batter he faced in the 1919 World Series. I'm not good enough at trans-area-code psychology to agree with this conclusion, although I do admit that the president should be a little more juiced than this about the prospect of deflating Willard Romney just for the sheer fun of it, since Romney is so obviously a bag of hot air that they should string him up and float him through Manhattan this Thanksgiving.

However, you know who really likes his job, and would like very much to keep it because he likes it so much?

Joe Biden, that's who.

Joe Biden is not riven with self-doubt. Joe Biden is not exhausted by the hurly-burly of politics. Joe Biden is not burdened by the weight of events and laid low by the constant battle against know-nothing obstructionism. Joe Biden is not going to take the stage tonight and find himself wishing he were anywhere else. I mean, god be good to him, as my gran' used to say, but Joe Biden actually likes all these silly performance pieces in which we insist he be engaged in order to stay vice-president. He revels in them. He would do ten of them a day, if he could. When I consider Joe Biden, and I look at the enthusiasm with which he throws himself into the various cataracts and torrents of hogwash that constitute our politics these days, I find myself looking at him the way I look at people who sky-dive or drive in demolition derbies. I have no idea why they do what they do, and I have absolutely no intention of doing it myself, ever, but, goddamn, do those people look like they're having fun.

So tonight, when Biden takes the stage to debate Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, it is very unlikely that the debate will hinge on whether either man really wants to be there. Biden eats these kinds of things on toast, and Ryan is as ambitious as Satan. What the debate will test, however, is whether or not the zombie-eyed granny-starver can summon up — or, more accurately, reconstruct — the persona that was built for him through the years by dozens of credulous Beltway hacks who looked at a youthful Republican who wore shoes and didn't talk about how Jesus road to work on a diplodocus, who instead immersed himself in pie charts and flow sheets and, in doing so, had created for everyone a believable simulcrum of a Smart Person. Then, of course, he published a couple of "budgets" that, judging by the general reaction to them, were written in bubonic bacilli. That was the first whack at the image. Then the president called him out face-to-face, and Ryan has yet to stop meeping about that. Hell, no less than N. Leroy Gingrich, definer of civilization's rules and leader (perhaps) of the civilizing forces, referred to Ryan's entire economic oeuvre as "thinly-veiled social Darwinism," which it plainly is, although Gingrich later had to walk that one back, alas.

Once Romney put him on the ticket, all that great video came out with Ryan's talking to various gatherings of aging Ayn Rand fanbois. He gave a speech at the Republican National Convention that shattered the weight-for-age record for individual prevarication. Suddenly, people started talking about what had been plain from the beginning of his rise to national prominence — that Paul Ryan is as much of an unlettered extremist on economics as Louie Gohmert is on terror babies, or Paul Broun is on how the world came to be created. Conservatism's mansion has many rooms, and almost all of them are padded.

(Not that there aren't members of the Beltway media still dazzled by the blue-eyed Deerslayer from Janesville. "I like the strategy of bow hunting and it takes a lot of preparation, and I do take it seriously because I am much more successful if I do things properly and prepare the right way," he told CNN recently while on the campaign trail in Memphis. Is he planning to shoot an apple off Biden's head? It is plainly time for Dana Bash to take a couple of weeks off.)

There is no mistaking what Paul Ryan is seeking to create in this country, and it doesn't matter how much happy-clappy middle-class opportunity gilding he puts on it. He believes that the general government — which, I have to keep reminding him, is ultimately a manifestation of the political commonwealth — has no role in alleviating poverty, very little role in alleviating disease, and is designed primarily to create and sustain a political and social oligarchy. His devotion is nearly theological. He opposes Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid on principle. He believes them to have been always illegitimate exercises of government's power because, ostensibly, he read that somewhere in the Constitution, but actually, because they thwart his attempts to hand all the nation's power, and certainly all of its wealth, over to the "makers," and the hell with the "takers." He learned this, of course, in his pursuit of his bachelor's degree from Miami of Ohio, which was paid for on my dime, through Social Security survivor's benefits and, as always, you're welcome, Ace.

I think that Joe Biden, who is not laboring under any delusions about what's at stake here, likely will point a lot of this out tonight. (I'll send him a buffalo nickel if he asks Ryan whether Ryan felt he was a "taker" when he was cashing all those government checks after his father kicked.) Ryan will assume his sad-eyed pose as the lonely embattled truth-teller, and he will hope that the country buys it one more time. He's a much smaller bag of hot air than his running mate, drifting down the boulevard with his guide-wires held by dozens of easily impressed media types. He doesn't even react well to needles. Not at all. Joe Biden is not afraid of needles, and Joe Biden wants to stay vice-president for awhile. I'll never understand that, but people take their fun where they can find it and needling Paul Ryan can be rare good craic. I do not think Joe Biden will be so overwhelmed by the gravity of the occasion that he denies himself that kind of fun.

Charles Pierce

[ToxicAdam]

Spending your time to watch the VP debates is like watching the Mtv Movie Awards. Unless you really have a hard-on for one of these two men.

--- // ---


This one is for Mandark, his favorite political pundit:

But I think that Mitt Romney is a moderate — like Nelson Rockefeller, who as governor of New York poured money into the state university system that educated me. Romney is an affable, successful businessman whose skills seem well-suited to this particular moment of economic crisis.

Hence I want to use my vote to make a statement about my unhappiness with the Democratic Party and the direction it has taken. The biggest issue for me is the Obama administration’s continuation of endless war, war, war. I denounced the Iraq incursion before it even happened.

 

She is going to send a message to the democrat party by voting for Jill Stein.

[Dickie Dee]

Pointless sure, but if Biden can beat up Ryan a bit it'll at least stem the flow of bitching and whining from Dems, which wouldn't be an inconsiderable achievement

[Phoenix Dark]

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to a 4-1/2 year low last week, suggesting that hiring may be picking up after stalling since the spring.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new jobless claims dropped a seasonally-adjusted 30,000 to 339,000, the lowest since February 2008. The four-week moving average, considered a more accurate gauge of labor market conditions, slid 11,500 to 364,000.

Dunno how reputable this site is, but allegedly a large state did not include their jobless claims in the report
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-11/data-massaging-continues-initial-claims-tumble-339k-lowest-2008-far-below-lowest-exp

[Joe Molotov]

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to a 4-1/2 year low last week, suggesting that hiring may be picking up after stalling since the spring.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new jobless claims dropped a seasonally-adjusted 30,000 to 339,000, the lowest since February 2008. The four-week moving average, considered a more accurate gauge of labor market conditions, slid 11,500 to 364,000.

Dunno how reputable this site is, but allegedly a large state did not include their jobless claims in the report
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-11/data-massaging-continues-initial-claims-tumble-339k-lowest-2008-far-below-lowest-exp

Seems pretty legit, but let me check and see what Drudge Report is saying and OH MY GOD...

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/10/11/paul-ryan-all-pumped-up-for-his-closeup/#1

[TakingBackSunday]

town-hall debate is needed stat

[Rusty Shackleford]

I don't think anything can top the Biden/Palin debate in 2008. It was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. She was in way over her head and she still had that mix of ignorance and confidence. It was awesome.

[Trurl]

If Romney wins on November 6th, I'm going to cut my dick off in front of the nearest TV camera doing live election coverage.  Other liberals should do the same.

[ToxicAdam]

A liberal making a personal sacrifice instead of a shared one? That's a novel idea. 

[Mandark]

This one is for Mandark, his favorite political pundit:

You're mistaking me for someone else?  TVC 15?

Brooks/Friedman/Krauthammer/Samuelson/Cohen are my bete noirs.

[ToxicAdam]

oh darn, it was white man I was thinking of.

[Mandark]

yeah yeah, we all look alike

[Phoenix Dark]

How come there are no brothas on the wall? Ta-Nehisi Coates is awesome

[TakingBackSunday]

yeah where the fuck did white man go