Still clueless and entitled

I guess he actually thinks he's good for something. Mitt Romney I mean. Here he goes blaming the people for choosing good government and the general welfare over his magnificent offer of his leadership:

Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival’s victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s first term.

Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the administration’s plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students on their parents’ insurance plans well into their 20s. Free contraception coverage under Obama’s healthcare plan, he added, gave an extra incentive to college-age women to back the president.

Romney argued that Obama’s healthcare plan’s promise of coverage “in perpetuity” was “highly motivational” to those voters making $25,000 to $35,000 who might not have been covered, as well as to African American and Hispanic voters. Pivoting to immigration, Romney said the Obama campaign’s efforts to paint him as “anti-immigrant” had been effective and that the administration’s promise to offer what he called “amnesty” to the children of illegal immigrants had helped turn out Hispanic voters in record numbers.

LA Times

Earth to Mitt -- it turned out most of us didn't want you. You had nothing to offer to the majority of the people. Your only accomplishment has been making yourself rich by destroying other peoples' livelihoods and bilking deluded donors. Go hang out with your car elevator and shut up. It's over.***UPDATE:
My Congresscritter gets Mitt. H/t Garance Franke-Ruta.

A lovely election except in my little corner of the world

Here's the new Senator from Massachusetts, telling it like it is.

And here's the new lesbian Senator from Wisconsin -- who'd have thought such a person would ever exist?

“There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now O.K. to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are.”Tammy Baldwin from Queers in History
Who were the voters who made this day?

The exit polls show the white share of the electorate declining to just 72 percent, 2 points lower than 2008. African American turnout held at 13 percent, while the Hispanic share of the electorate reached 10 percent--up from 8 percent in 2008. The exit polls also show Obama winning Latino voters by an even larger margin than he did in 2008, 69-29.

Nate Cohn

That's the country we're stumbling toward. I like it here. The struggle to end the death penalty will go on, though California was not ready for Prop. 34 this year.

Lots more to come, but for today, I'm ready for my first day in a year not being obsessed about a future election.

Finally ...

Identity politics

Since I read this by Tom Scocca in Slate over the weekend, I've thought that I should comment on it.

There is a real, airtight bubble in this election, but it's not Obama's. As a middle-aged white man, in fact, I'm breaching it. White people—white men in particular—are for Mitt Romney. White men are supporting Mitt Romney to the exclusion of logic or common sense, in defiance of normal Americans. Without this narrow, tribal appeal, Romney's candidacy would simply not be viable. Most kinds of Americans see no reason to vote for him.

This fact is obfuscated because white people control the political media. So we get the Washington Post reporting that the election is "more polarized along racial lines than any other contest since 1988"...

Polarization would mean that various races were mutually pulling apart, toward their favored candidates. "Minorities" is not a race (nor, you may have noticed, is "women"). Minorities and women are the people standing still, while white men run away from them.

…White people don't like to believe that they practice identity politics. The defining part of being white in America is the assumption that, as a white person, you are a regular, individual human being. Other demographic groups set themselves apart, to pursue their distinctive identities and interests and agendas. Whiteness, to white people, is the American default. …

But in truth, I couldn't think of anything to say.

If you live in California, this sad development is simply obvious. We went over this hump back in the late 1990s and we know we aren't going back. The local Republican Party has become a strange, distorted white rump faction, unable to attract more than a third of the electorate. The rest of us are trying to figure out how to restore the state they broke on the way out the door. I tend to believe we'll get there, though it is going to be tough. We need to restore the democratic power to tax by simple majorities, rebuild our once great infrastructure and educational system, and turn from fear to hope. We're trying -- in particular, note that even today's hobbled California has launched several initiatives to recognize and combat with the threat of climate change, more than we can say for much of the nation.

Let's give Chris Rock the last word on this:


H/t Digby for the cartoon. H/t to Annie Laurie at Balloon Juice for Chris.

This is the march for our time

There will be other struggles in the future, but this is today's. Off to walk a precinct ...

Romney campaign shows itself clueless

Now I have more insight into why I keep getting these mailers:

All targeting carries the risk of missing the mark, and there are regularly voters whose actual attitudes defy the predictions of statistical models. But regular misfires by Republicans -- which at best only waste resources and at worst mobilize Democrats who might not have voted otherwise, or provoke a backlash among those still persuadable -- illustrate a gap between how the right and left practice politics in the 21st century. Contrary to the wishful intimations of ... Post and Times stories, while the groups on the right could conceivably catch up with Obama and his allies in the scope and funding of their ground-level activities, in terms of sophistication they lag too far behind to catch up in 2012.

Sasha Issenberg

I sure hope this assessment is correct. That I -- a long time registered Democratic dyke in San Francisco -- have been getting Romney fund appeals all year certainly suggests it might be. When you make yourself ignorant of science, as contemporary Republicans have, you are tying your own hands.

Issenberg's article is fascinating if you want to understand how data-rich campaigns work to get out the vote these days. I'm lucky enough to be using some of this stuff in our current campaign. After the election I'll try to summarize what this old time field warrior learned about contemporary possibilities -- and what I think we all still have to learn.

Listen to the women!

… if I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I'm gonna lose my mind. … Tina Fey

Apparently the right wingers are freaking out about this one. I think she's adorable.

An exclusive club

These guys really do not believe adult women are full human beings. Human life consists of people with their plumbing and zygotes?

Why the election matters ...

... if they win, we can wave goodbye to not only a woman's right to choose, but quite possibly legal access to hormonal contraceptives as well. If we win, Roe will likely remain in force, but they can continue to constrict access to abortions in many states.

... this election is like a bet that we've got a 2/3 chance of winning, but if we win, the duck comes down and gives us $100, while if we lose, we lose the house, the car, and the retirement fund.

low-tech cyclist

Who's best for empire?

The "foreign policy" debate on Monday night -- this event could more accurately be labelled the "imperial management" debate -- is going to be painful for those of us who think we've had enough wars and that the U.S. should get out of the business of telling people in other countries how they ought to organize themselves. Four years ago most voters were war-weary; we'd spent a decade frittering away lives and treasure for no particular purpose in Iraq and Afghanistan. We picked a president who seemed to understand that better than the other guy, even if he had to pay some homage with the ever-present flag pin on his lapel to imperial rituals.

Without ever breaking verbally from the pattern, Obama has delivered a measure of realism to our international doings. David Sanger spelled out some of the differences:

… Mr. Obama is out of the occupation business. He seemed to take to heart the parting warning of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the Republican who served under the last two presidents. On his way out the door, Mr. Gates said that anyone in his job “who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Obama knows we can't afford unlimited empire; Romney and the Republicans insist enough bluster and accompanying death and destruction in other people's countries will work out just fine. There's a clear lesser evil choice here: no matter how disappointing Obama has been, his administration offers more room for sanity than the alternative.

No doubt Obama has been disappointing. He's developed and deeply embedded among the executive branch's powers the facilities for making war on the cheap: drone attacks on those we define as "enemies" even in other people's countries; unconstrained secret global spying including on our own citizens as part of "security" business as usual; permanent detention without trial for official enemies (see Guantanamo and Bagram); and secret cyberattacks on governments we don't like such as Iran. It's quite a catalogue and we don't know the half -- we're not supposed to know about any of it. When someone lifts the curtain, the leaker can expect to end up locked away: see Bradley Manning. Permanent secret war and its crimes have become the accepted norm under this president.

But mendacious Mitt wants to take us back to the glory years of the U.S. imperium. Sanger memorably calls this "Eisenhower envy." That's probably why he has occasionally blurted out his hostility to Russia -- he's never gotten over thinking the (no longer extant) Soviet Union is our great competitor. Since he can't really be that dumb and he demonstrably feels no obligation to tell the electorate any truths about what he really intends in any arena, I don't imagine we'll learn anything much about what he'd do as President from the "foreign policy" debate.

What's even more distressing than the positions of the candidates is that openness to another war -- an attack on Iran -- seems to be gaining in the electorate:

The most recent NBC/WSJ poll finds that 58 percent of Americans believe the US should initiate military action to destroy Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons if Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear capabilities, compared to 33 percent who would oppose military action. Remarkably, 44 percent strongly support such an action, compared to 23 percent who strongly oppose. Support for military action against Iran has steadily increased throughout the Obama presidency. In 2008, opponents of war outnumbered supporters by 5 points, 41-46. By March 2012, supporters had seized a 12-point lead. Over the last six months, that margin has doubled to 25 points.

Nate Cohn, TNR

We wouldn't like the aftermath if we did it. The military establishment seems to understand this better than the civilians -- not only in the United States, but even in Israel where the impetus for war originates. The institutions that would have to do the dirty deed have learned to recognize a quagmire when offered one.

As long as there is not a durable political consensus among U.S. voters that imperial wars are not worth it -- unaffordable, can't' be "won," and simply wrong -- our politicians will bluff, weave and posture trying to uphold the illusion of world-dominating empire. And our social services, safety net, educational institutions, roads, and lives will continue to deteriorate. But we can't entirely blame the politicians so long as the people continue to thrill to the siren song of empire. It's over, folks. Learn to live with it.

Hey, did you know there is an election going on?

I know nothing about this pugilistic gentleman. There's an incumbent in the district; whoever he is, this guy's chances aren't great. But his poster sure catches the feel of where this long season has brought us these days.

Republicans must think we're morons …

I'm late to this topic because it just seems too stupid to bother with, but apparently Republicans think they discovered a winning complaint in blaming the Prez for falling to bluster properly when a U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. diplomatic staffers were killed in Benghazi several weeks ago.

Governor Romney stubbed his toe on this point in the debate last night.

How dumb do they think we are? When we send people to unstable countries to interact with the people that live there, the job is dangerous. Especially if, as seems to have been the case with Ambassador Stevens, those diplomats are actually capable of talking with and possibly understanding something about the locals. Many Libyans seem to have liked the guy -- and, though Republicans seem to think that's a sign of weakness -- that's a kind of strength that begins to offset some of the enemies our gross imperial pretensions have collected.


Libyans demonstrate after the Benghazi attack.
This dangerous job is why we have diplomats. It can never be a completely safe position -- unless we lock our folks down so they never interact with the locals. And if we do that, we become blinded fools about those other countries -- oh yeah, we did just have a Republican president and staff who were such fools. But ignorance is nothing to aspire to.

Unless maybe you are a Republican...

Dixie resurgent

If Mitt Romney wins the popular vote on November 6, here's why:

Gallup had some pretty eye-popping numbers this morning, showing Romney jumping to a five point lead nationwide. But look at this regional breakdown.

• East - Obama +4

• Midwest - Obama +4

• South - Obama -22

• West - Obama +6

If those numbers hold, those of us lucky enough not to live in the South may become enthusiasts for the electoral college. Maybe.

This does leave one mourning for all the Black, Brown and sane white people who find themselves located in this misbegotten sink hole of bigotry and ignorance.

Some "little jokes" can do you in

***
Tommy Thompson is a former governor of Wisconsin (and one nasty guy) who is running for the Senate this year.

H/t Talking Points Memo for both clips.

About that presidential polling ...

Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium puts his statistically derived picture of where the presidential contest sits into a simple metaphor for a math-challenged questioner:

Words:

Imagine a six-gun loaded with five blue cartridges and one red cartridge. The blue ones will pass through you harmlessly. The red one, not. You pick up the gun.

Fade to black.

I'd love to see better odds, but I'm glad Wang is so confident the ones the country is facing aren't worse.

Watch Mitt Romney debate himself

The guy just provides more and more fodder for this ongoing series. Previous installment here.

I can't help feeling that a person who wants to be President should stand for something more than whatever phoney-baloney he thinks will sell to a particular audience. Guess I'm old fashioned.

Why does this President sometimes act like a doormat?

It has been tempting since the President's disappointing debate performance last week to indulge in psychoanalyzing the guy. What is it about Obama that causes him to lapse, periodically, into what seems like passive accommodation when faced with people who are are out to destroy him? (See also the debt ceiling debacle.) I'm suspicious of this prying impulse; obviously we can't really know what is going on with a person so inward who inhabits such a remote bubble of a life. But I'll admit to being intrigued by some of the speculation.

Garance Franke-Ruta produced an empathetic specimen of this genre, suggesting that performing the role of a Commander-in-Chief ordering death and destruction is simply wearing Obama down.

A person of his temperament cannot maintain the same open demeanor when he's dealing with war and death all the time. As, we must recall, Obama has been for years now. If Obama seems shut down, perhaps it is because he has to be to be who he is and do the job he needs to do day in and day out. If his heart didn't seem in it last night, I wonder if it's not in part because the last thing he needs to consider in his work on a day-to-day basis is his heart. It's a long way from being a community organizer, civil-rights lawyer and anti-war state senator to running a drone war that kills innocent civilians, ordering the death of militants, overseeing a policy that's led to an increase in American casualties in Afghanistan, and delivering funereal remarks at a ceremony honoring the returning remains of a slain American diplomat.

She may have something; the guy certainly seems too reflective to be able to let responsibility for all that carnage just bounce off him.

Harold Meyerson offers an even more interesting hypothesis about why Obama sometimes seems paralyzed:

Obama is the first president forced to confront the large-scale evisceration of the American middle class. Incomes for all but the wealthiest Americans had been stagnating for decades when he took office, but cheap credit had kept the middle class afloat. The year before he took office, however, that credit abruptly dried up. Obama’s challenge has been to get the real economy working again, which he’s tried to do in multiple ways: saving the auto industry, pushing for more investment in infrastructure, improving the quality of schools. But the offshoring and robotization of manufacturing, the rise of contingent employment, and the effective extirpation of unions in the private sector have reduced both the quantity and quality of American jobs. Solving these problems requires conceptualizing and actualizing policies that go well beyond the limits of current American politics.

The president understands all of this. ...

Does he understand all this? Much of what any of us are able to know and observe about our society depends on whether there are others around us who confirm that we are seeing something real. The President is surrounded by advisers and appointees who are in the business of not seeing this, who deal in technical fixes to the economy that attempt to paper over underlying inequities and dangers. He hasn't been at all hospitable to the chorus of economic gurus like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz who point to deep rot in the system. Moreover, nobody the President deals with every day has personal experience with the widespread collapse of economic hope that is the current norm; people who so far have profited from current economic arrangements have escaped into a different world from ordinary folk. Smarts can only take him so far into that reality.

If the 99 percent want a President who notices and remains conscious that our economic system has stopped working, we have to create our own understanding of what's wrong and ensure that our voices pervade what passes for debate. Most of our politicians have very little incentive to confront systemic economic failure, national and international inequity and violence, and our destruction of the planet's balance. The world, as it is, works for them. Leaders smart enough and generous enough to confront ugly realities will not be able to move in better directions unless they are surrounded by an aroused people who intelligently demand new directions. We aren't there, though of necessity, we're working on it.

Until then, Obama with his periodic brain freezes is about as good as we're going to get and we need to keep him in office for another term.

Debates, debates, they just keep on debating ...

Can you believe anything this guy says? He always projects such conviction -- even when he has just repudiated what he just said.

Debate impressions

I guess the Prez thought his peeps were getting too comfortable. It had begun to look as if he'd wipe the floor with Mitt in November. The voters who can make the difference, especially Latinos and young folks (often the same people) wouldn't feel they needed to show up. That would let the old white guy party crawl back into the race. Couldn't let that happen …

Oh -- and Republican money might have been ready to flee to Senate and House races where they had better chances than with Mitt.

Well -- with the President's dampening performance last night that delusion is over. Democrats and friends were reminded this will be a fight. We were also reminded of the times -- such as during the debt negotiations debacle -- when the President mysteriously goes into his impression of a doormat. This is a fault in an otherwise good guy.

But he's what we have between us and the oligarchs. Not all we would want, but the best we've been able to push out there at the moment.

Back to work.

Somebody has to get the job done

These folks pick up Mitt's garbage.


Joan is a City of San Diego sanitation worker whose route included Mitt Romney's $12 million oceanfront villa in La Jolla, Calif.


Richard is a City of San Diego sanitation worker whose route includes Mitt Romney's $12 million oceanfront villa in La Jolla, Calif. This is his story.

I'm enroute to San Diego today, so these seemed appropriate.