In a thread about the Republican primary the other day, one of you wrote that part of Cain’s appeal is that he didn’t seem like an asshole the way the other Republican candidates did. I was skeptical, but I’m coming around to thinking that’s part of it. As much as I hate to link to a Politico puff piece, I was struck by how much his colleagues at the Kansas City Fed branch liked him personally.
This is not a reason for any rational person to vote for him. In 2000, voters, prodded heavily by the Village, almost elected George W. Bush largely on the nice guy/like to have a beer with him angle. The 999 plan would be disastrous and is so transparently silly that even the Village is skeptical of it (admittedly, they might not be if Cain had better VSP credentials, let’s see what happens if Greg Mankiw and Douglas Holtz-Eakin get behind it).
Honestly, I do think there’s a racial component to this. Can you imagine how fucked Cain would be politically if there were pictures of him playing with money like a entitled jerk? He wouldn’t be where he was if he didn’t come across as likable to many people.
The point is probably moot, since Cain has no chance if he sits out all the early states as he is planning to do, but I think it means he may be less of a flavor of the month than Trump and Perry were.
Palli
which one is Romney? They all look alike.
Brachiator
I’m trying hard to get the yoking of “racial component” and being “likeable.”
I haven’t kept up with what Cain’s strategy is supposed to be, but I don’t get how he can be a serious candidate if he intends to sit out some races. Is he avoiding caucuses vs meaningful primaries?
Linda Featheringill
Cain is likeable. He’s interesting when he talks, even when he’s mistaken. He does have a here’s-a-black-man-you-can-support factor.
He’s also “one of our blacks,” for good or bad. Not exotic like Obama.
Don’t know if he’s a winner but he probably is the candidate to beat if you want the nomination.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, if I were a Democrat interested in winning elections, I’d be doing some research on Cain looking for pictures of him looking like an entitled jerk, or at least getting some feedback from people at Godfather’s on what kind of boss he was, apart from the massive firings sort of thing.
The problem of course is while the info might be out there, the MSM is loathe to bring facts to the table, as facts inevitably make Republicans look like assholes, and that violates the entire “fair and balanced” disease that the MSM suffers from. Because it’s not fair to report facts that demonstrate what assholes Republicans are.
Bill E Pilgrim
He used to blog here, right?
The Raven
He seems to be a tentacle of the Kochtopus, AP article. With that kind of backing, he may turn out to be a lot of trouble.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
Cain probably vacations at a normal place, like Myrtle Beach, not some far off exotic land like Maui or something.
One of the many reasons why when The Revolution comes, Cokie’s got a tumbrel spot reserved.
Corner Stone
Cain has no money. He has no infrastructure.
All the TP’ers that say they are behind him now will never fundraise for him because they are all grifters. They may “fundraise” for him, but he’ll never see any of that money. They’re grifting off him. Because they are grifters.
He can’t make ballots in some states.
boss bitch
He’s vocally anti-Muslim, anti-gay, called AA’s brainwashed and racist, and said:
yeah, this guy isn’t an asshole at all.
trollhattan
I dunno. If I hear him tell me “Nobody gets taaard of HagenDaz Black Walnut” one more time, my head’s gonna esplode. I suppose if he hires a staff of aphorism writers, stat, he might could last awhile longer, but to me he seems like another empty suit with a big battery pack.
His yeoman’s work on behalf of the tobacco industry seems like rather a large millstone, or is that a “feature” in village eyes?
Samara Morgan
Cain cant win. He’s just the anti-romney du semaine.
How about it, Mastertroll?
Just one post titled IS ROMNEY ELECTABLE?
cat48
His personality is pleasant enough, but the bile he spews about “Blacks on the Democrat Plantation, etc.” turn me off. I don’t find him “likable enough.”
You know who else is likable, according to the polls? Your prez (70% say), and the Villagers say he is cold and doesn’t like other people. They rant on for 5 to 10 pages about it sometimes.
amk
Latest cnn poll shows him tied with mittens @ 25% and with govnor goodhair pulling his hair at a distant third (13%), with only 10% undecided.
I want ‘herb’ as their candidate to ensure a 450 EV win for PBO.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Surely to God, Pres. Obama’s team has someone doing that.
Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson
I don’t know: the electrocuting/alligator guarded border fence is not likeable. If it’s a joke it’s dumb, and if it’s not a joke (and it isn’t, really) then it gets him into the territory where he likes killing kids.
Which is really to say that he, like the other amateur candidates, don’t have what it takes to sustain at this level of political gladitorial combat. Perry wasn’t ready for prime-time; Bachmann wasn’t; Palin had the native cunning to know she doesn’t…and so on.
The interesting thing is to see how long it takes for Romney to climb over 25-30% in the GOP polls. The longer it takes, the more likely it is that he will suffer a small but real erosion of what the GOP candidate should expect from the wingnut base. A couple percent who stay home rather than vote for a Mormon/(former) pro-choicer/(former) recognizer of AGW/dog-torturer/empty-suit-from-the-Soviet-Socialist-Commonwealth-of-Massachusetts…and that becomes meaningful in a context where 54-47 is a landslide.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Man, I hope I live long enough to see that (from a position not in a tumbrel cart myself).
JGabriel
DougJ:
Mankiw probably still has a smidgen of self-respect he keeps locked up in an underground bunker somewhere that would prevent him from endorsing 999.
Holtz-Eakin, of course, is already behind it:
God, that guy is such suck-up.
.
jibeaux
To me he seems both fairly dumb, and well-stocked in footbullets. I know, feature not a bug, but I wouldn’t have thought there’d be so many owners of those quote-a-day tear-off desk calendars out there…
Corner Stone
Why is MSNBC interviewing Meatloaf about the Iran national security threat?
Senyordave
@trollhattan: Just shows what a hard-working guy he is. If a couple hundred thousand people die annually, just remember its part of the glorious free market system.
Josie
Sorry, but I’m just not seeing the likeability factor. He irritates me no end. All I see is carnival barker with a mean sense of humor.
JGabriel
BTW, I started that Holtz-Eakin comment as a joke about how H-E would endorse 9-9-9, if Cain was still in the lead on February 1. Then, I thought, “Better research that first.”
Turns out my suspicion was correct: Holtz-Eakin has even less self-respect that I was initially willing to give him credit for.
.
Dougerhead
@Brachiator:
You think Republicans would support a black candidate they thought was a jerk? They might with a white candidate, not with a black one.
Xecky Gilchrist
I think part of his appeal is that he loudly trumpets very, very simple ideas like his walked-back no-more-than-3-pages-per-bill plan and the 999 concept.
Sure they’re ridiculously stupid simple ideas, but there’s a lot of people on the R side that wants oversimplified pablum whether it makes any sense or not.
The Raven
@Corner Stone: “Cain has no money. He has no infrastructure.”
He may have the Koch Brothers.
As to “likeable,” it strikes me that both Reagan and Bush II were “likeable”–that is to say, superficially well-mannered and very nasty underneath. Such likeability is a classic attribute of a con man. Since they are not constrained by honesty, they can say whatever will most please their listeners. This type of candidate does well in a television-centric media environment and every successful post-JFK candidate has had some “likeability.”
JGabriel
@Josie:
That is the likeability factor. You overestimate your fellow human beings.
.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Now MSNBC is interviewing the lady that played the scared 2nd wife of the guy on Law N Order who kidnapped his two girls from his first wife, then killed a mutual friend of theirs on a college scouting trip to NYC.
What the hell?
Dougerhead
@Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson:
Neither is mocking death row inmates and torturing mentally ill “terror suspects”. Real Murkins don’t see things the way you and I do
JGabriel
@The Raven:
Sigh. Our children is not learning.
ETA: Oh sure, correct your typo and ruin my joke! Buzzkill.
.
schrodinger's cat
Not likeable enough for me.
TenguPhule
Cain will be the most likable head mounted on a pike in the great thicket of GOP heads mounted on pikes.
Up the Universe when the revolution comes.
EconWatcher
Are we writing off Perry already? I wish we could, because I think he has the scariest combination of insanity and conceivable electability. But I think it may be premature.
MattM
That “nice guy” image will get destroyed in a heartbeat as soon as people start using his old talk radio tapes against him.
The guy had a successful right wing daily talk show in a deep red state for YEARS. You don’t get that by being a teddy bear. Cain was spouting assholery every weeknight from 7-10.
Dougerhead
@EconWatcher:
He is *so bad* in the debates. I am stunned at how bad he is.
Brachiator
@Dougerhead:
I don’t think that Republicans would support anyone that they did not believe was “their” jerk. There has to be some degree of likability for any candidate.
Otherwise, this shit is drifting into a variation of the racist nonsense that was applied to Obama, and to often is applied to any black candidate.
I wouldn’t vote for Cain. And I have no idea how he would fare in primaries when actual votes have to be cast. I have also long noted that Obama’s election unleashed waves of racial anxiety, as well as outright racism among many, mainly, but not solely Republicans and some Tea Party types.
But I also think it noteworthy that a counter-counter reaction has arisen among some conservatives, who clearly like Cain for the same reason (for good or ill) that they liked Dubya. They perceive him to be a conservative Christian with interests like their own. They don’t see him as a “Safe Negro.”
Liberals and progressives who are blind to this are setting themselves up for a big fall.
And hell, I would love to see Cain get the nomination, and Obama and Cain laugh their asses off after a presidential debate and note that both parties had decided to put their destinies in the hands of a black candidate, and jointly announce, “The Revolution has come, you muthas!”
And where would diehard racists possibly have to go if something like this happened?
gogol's wife
@The Raven:
This.
rikryah
Cain is their go-along-to-get-along NEGRO.
of course, they like him.
he’s been kissing their ass and brown -nosing from the get go.
As a Black person who is in the professional workplace, and has been labeled ‘ difficult’, even though I just consider myself ‘ honest’…
the thing is…I KNOW ‘ militant Black people’, and I’m not one of them. I’m just ‘ honest’ and feel no compunction in the ‘ education of White folk’.
it’s funny how all the Black folks that are ‘liked’ have this in common with one another.
catclub
@JGabriel: “said the Cain estimates were a _good-faith effort at a rough calculation_ of the rate needed to be revenue-neutral.”
So within an order of magnitude of revenue neutral. Got it.
handy
@Corner Stone:
Donald Trump thinks he’s a really great guy? (Hey that’s all I got).
EconWatcher
@Dougerhead:
I haven’t watched the debates (I have a nice plasma and I wanted to preserve the screen intact). But it sounds like I need to have a peek.
Elizabelle
Cain’s also benefitting from positive spin by our finest mainstream and liberal media. Which is covering Republicans far more positively than President Obama.
Per Pew study just out, Cain’s coverage was deemed 28% favorable. (Perry got even more of a tongue bath.)
Vs. nine percent (yes, single digits) in “positive coverage” for President Obama. Even in the aftermath of killing Osama bin Laden.
GOS diary by Jed Lewison: Pew Study: 2012 GOP candidates getting more favorable coverage than Obama
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/17/1027289/-Pew-study:-2012-Republican-candidates-getting-more-favorable-coverage-thanObama-?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29
Our media. They’re almost as useful as those delightful Wall Street whiners from thread below.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Brachiator:
Its irrelevant if the media develops a crush on Cain the same way they did for W back in 2000. And, I dunno, it seems like liberals who try and say nice things about Cain…are sorta falling into same trap liberals fell into back in 2000 with Bush. Its almost as if we really need to find an acceptable GOP candidate who we would want to have a beer with.
Samara Morgan
then who’s the nominee?
JGabriel
rikryah:
Has anyone considered the possibility that a portion of the GOP financial elite (Koch Bros., et. al.) know that the policies they prefer will hurt the bottom 99%, and support Cain because, if GOP wins, they want a black guy to take the fall for the economic disaster that will aid only them?
.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
I think I’m speaking for a large part of Black America when I say, “Herman, fuck you if you think I’m brainwashed. DIAF.”
(we wouldn’t really tell him to DIAF, that’s a ‘total dramatization’)
MattF
Cain has various fruitcake-nutty opinions and a mean streak– but the rest of the Republican wannabes are jaw-hits-floor scary. Bachmann? Gingrich? Perry? Mittens? Brr.
Mike in NC
Mittens IS an entitled jerk and pretty much EVERYBODY immediately senses that. Just wait until Colbert and the rest of the late night comics start to update all the material they’ve saved about him since 2008.
Amir Khalid
If my suspicions (others suspect this too) are right, Cain doesn’t want to be President and can’t afford to win the nomination. He’s campaigning for The Herminator(TM) brand, for whatever it is he hopes to sell afterward. He wants to get close enough to the nomination to boast about, but not to actually win it. He’s not organized or raising money or meeting the people in the early-primary states because, if he does too well there, his momentum would make dropping out difficult to justify. Dropping out in those circumstances might cost him some hard-earned brand value.
So far, it’s going rather well for him. He’s getting lots of brand-building attention, without convincing anyone outside the Tea Party that he’s Presidential material. But there’s still a risk of succeeding too well. If he opens fire on his own feet, it won’t be an accident. It will be to put the brakes on a campaign that’s getting dangerously close to a success he doesn’t intend.
Hill Dweller
It’s Rasmussen, so take it with a grain of salt, but Cain is leading the President in their most recent poll by 2(43% to 41%).
Corner Stone
@handy: It was actually Mike Rodgers R-MI but I swear if you slapped a normal gray biz suit on Meatloaf he could get by the guards.
ABL
he seems like a giant gaping asshole to me. in fact, i’m going to go ahead and bet that most black Democrats think Herman Cain is a giant asshole and more of a giant asshole than Romney or Perry.
Barry
Dougerhead: “I was struck by how much his colleagues at the Kansas City Fed branch liked him personally.”
That’s not a point in his favor; too many Fed ‘colleagues’ are in the service of the banks and Wall St.
ABL
FTFY.
Cain is nothing more than the Republicans’ “look, we’re not racist!” token. Of course they like him. He’s pandering to them and making them feel all warm and post-racial inside.
Yevgraf
Herman Cain will NOT be the nominee. The nominee and his chief henchman will be two pasty white chubmuffins, all in order to placate teatards.
Brachiator
@rikryah:
Funny. You had some fools making this claim about Obama as well. Including some black conservatives, as well as the usual gang of idiots, Limbaugh and company.
And you still have some supposedly radical minded folks who cannot imagine that Obama is actually doing presidential stuff, and takes orders from the Real White People In Charge(tm).
Even the current crop of Republicans are learning that there ain’t no such thing as a “separate but equal presidency” as they do everything they can to obstruct Obama. Being president, by definition, means that you don’t simply have to “go along.” Weird how some people don’t get that.
harlana
I totally get the likability factor. I mean, considering we’re at 9.1% unemployment, how cuddly is this?: “If you don’t have a job, blame yourself.” That just gave me the warm fuzzies for days. Considering I looked for work for 2 years before I found anything, I positively piddled myself with delight over his adorableness.
Sentient Puddle
@Hill Dweller: I was going to point that out too. However, I’d advise taking it with a brick of salt as opposed to a grain, seeing as the same poll has Romney behind Obama.
cckids
@Dougerhead:
Yes. And not in the typical, Republican-lying-about-everything, yes the earth is flat bad. Just BAD, horrible, cannot speak up for himself & construct a semi-coherent sentence. Makes Palin look like an intellectual giant–she could at least keep the word salad coming; with all appropriate red-meat catch phrases. Perry cannot even manage that. He seems to be smacked out on cold meds or something.
Elizabelle
Incidentally, the quotes in comment 41 are from a Politico story embedded in Lewison link, and not Lewison’s own words.
Win win; get the gist of a Politico story without having to click on that frequently accursed site.
Props to Politico writer Keach Hagey for a pretty good article, though.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B35AA0AB-8399-402E-A5DE-ABE6933481BC
Anoniminous
At the moment Cain is riding the Not-Romney wave. He is also getting a lot of free publicity so the Not-Romney’s have his name in forefront of their mind (loosely speaking) when they are polled which can give a candidate as much as a ten percent polling boost.
CNN reporting 66% of GOP voters have yet to chose their candidate.
Many states are switching or thinking of switching to proportional delegate allocation.
Still do not have the final primary schedule.
All of these will affect who the ultimate nominee is and until things settle prediction is just about impossible.
AnotherBruce
@JGabriel: “I don’t think it’s dramatically out of line with reality,”
That’s such a ringing endorsement. Let me try that. “Unicorns, I don’t think they’re dramatically out of line with reality.”
Ash Can
@Villago Delenda Est:
This might be happening. TPM was reporting this morning that, when he was head of the National Restaurant Association, one of his main projects was lobbying against stricter drunk driving laws. Nice.
eemom
on the road today I saw a car with the following three bumper stickers:
BLACK REPUBLICANS something-something
MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS A REPUBLICAN
IF YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA TO PROVE YOU’RE NOT A RACIST, VOTE FOR CAIN TO PROVE YOU’RE NOT STUPID.
#2 had me flummoxed. Where does THAT come from?
Brachiator
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I have no idea what you are getting at. Dubya stole the first election and won the second. Either way, he was president.
And a lot of conservatives, especially evangelicals, were happy with him. Cain seems to be appealing to the same base. Race doesn’t seem to have much to do with it.
And as a businessman, he seems to have been more successful, with less help from a prominent mother and father, than either Romney or Donald the Chump Trump.
Liberals don’t have to say nice things about Cain.
But I disdain people, especially white liberal fools, who get a happy when they can safely unleash suppressed reservoirs of racism against conservative blacks. I don’t have much respect for blacks and others who encourage this stuff, either.
@ABL:
Reminds me of the stuff that people like Shelby Steele was saying about Obama in 2007.
Of course, having previously embarrassed himself with claims that Obama was a “Safe Negro,” he has most recently embarrassed himself with claims now that Obama is a “Dangerous Negro” who hates Amurrica.
Interesting how people are falling back on the same nonsense to denigrate Cain.
JGabriel
@AnotherBruce:
The point is that Holtz-Eakin doesn’t have the self-respect to point out the obvious: that 9-9-9 is dramatically out of line with reality.
.
Dr. Squid
Pat Buchanan is also considered to be quite personable. Doesn’t make the shit that is squeezed from his mouth any less scary.
AnotherBruce
@JGabriel: Nor does he have the self respect to strongly endorse it. “I don’t think it’s dramatically out of line with reality,”
What a weak, crappy, mealy mouthed endorsement.
David in NY
@ABL: Bet you’re right. Our friend, the former child-care person for our two kids, was from Belize originally and is now a citizen. I would have guessed she was fundamentally apolitical until I saw, posted on her Facebook page, a picture of Obama, back turned with his 2012 symbol superimposed. The caption reads: “I’ve got your back.”
Makes me guess that the black community will come out for the President again. I dearly hope. (Let me say that the lines at our central Brooklyn, 95% minority of some kind, election precinct were absolutely phenomenal in 2008 — totally unprecedented. If that should change, the trouble would be bad.)
Dougerhead
@Samara Morgan:
Probably Romney.
David in NY
@AnotherBruce: Wonder why the follow-up question never got asked: “Well, how far out of line do you think it is?”
Linda Featheringill
@Yevgraf: #54
:-)
catclub
@eemom: History, MLK _was_
a republican, then switched his reg when the democrats supported LBJ’s civil rights laws and the GOP went all southern strategy.
AnotherBruce
By the way, Nice and Sleazy does it too. Does it every time.
Dougerhead
@ABL:
Yes, I guess I mean likable to white Republicans, I wasn’t sure how many modifiers to put in so I didn’t put any in.
Dougerhead
@Brachiator:
I think Cain is fine in the debates, but his performance at CPAC was an awful caricature.
Ben Cisco
@Brachiator:
Um, the man referred to any blacks that vote Dem as “brainwashed” – I don’t believe that pointing out what he actually SAID = going racist against him.
__
@rikryah:
No doubt. The NeoConfederates think that having The Herminator™ around insulates them from charges of racism b/c HE’LL be the one saying the racist shit – sort of a digital overseer role.
__
That said, I think he has a shot at #2 on the ticket. The GOTP is DESPERATE for anything they can use against the President, and too stupid to see how this would blow up in their faces. If disgust w/Romney rises high enough, they will turn to “their” guy.
Tim in SF
The Google machine could not tell me what VSP meant.
Samara Morgan
@Dougerhead: but some percentage of white voters wont vote for a black man….like some percentage of white voters wont vote for a mormon.
Any GOP candidate needs 65% of the white vote to beat Obama.
Brachiator
@catclub:
I am not sure that this is true.
In a past article about a billboard claiming that MLK was Republican, there is this:
Clearly, Dr King supported Democrats when they came out for Civil Rights legislation, but this is not the same thing as any official political party affiliation.
slag
@Tim in SF: Very Serious Person/People.
Ben Cisco
@Tim in SF: Very Serious Person; as in someone who would get invited on the Sunday morning fluffer shows.
__
ETA: slag beat me to it.
Samara Morgan
@Dougerhead:
not if people start pointing out he cant win.
as far as i can tell, the only reason anyone in the base would vote for him is because they think hes electable.
But hes not.
RalfW
ABC nooz manages to do some reporting:
Long Ties to Koch Brothers Key to Cain’s Campaign
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/extensive-ties-powerful-koch-group-boost-cain-14746710
EDIT: ABC nooz manages to run a decent AP wire story about Cain’s ties to Koch. How long will that streak last???
slag
@eemom:
Is the strategy behind voting for Cain “to prove you’re not stupid” the same as the strategy behind wearing the “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt to prove you’re not stupid? Because I, for one, never found that strategy very effective.
rikryah
Alveda King is an anti-abortion WACKO.
and I mean that in every sense of the word.
anything always comes back to ABORTION.
the thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised if MLK grew up in a Republican household. Daddy King, and his father, were big-time, influential preachers.
but, NOBODY who reads the words of MLK thinks he has ANYTHING in common with the Republican Party.
Brachiator
@Dougerhead:
Yeah. Apparently so. Still, it’s hard to take any of these candidates seriously until there is some actual primary voting to separate PR noise from real political commitment.
@Ben Cisco:
That’s not the point. His conservative credentials are not much different than any of the other Republican contenders. And he has been more successful in business, without support of wealthy parents, than either Romney or Trump the Chump.
Cain’s statements certainly should be criticized. But this stuff about him being acceptable to conservatives only because he is likeable and “safe” is just racist BS.
Here’s George Will, in 2007, on Obama:
@rikryah:
You clearly missed my point. The citation was meant to show that claims that MLK was ever formally a registered Republican are unfounded. And irrelevant.
David in NY
@Samara Morgan: “He’s not [electable].” Actually, polling says he is the most electable in the general election. What he is not, is the most nominatable (to coin an atrocious word). That is, he can collect only a quarter to a third in the Republican primary, but he gets in the 40 percents in the general polling, not so different from Obama.
David in NY
@catclub: People forget that many, probably most, blacks who voted in the South before the mid ’60’s voted Republican. Whites in the South who favored civil rights often were Republicans. Many of the best judges who enforced the civil rights laws in the early years were Republicans.
It was Nixon’s “Southern (i.e. racist) Strategy” that really changed all this in the end. Lots of former Republicans subsequently disavowed positions the Nixonian reshaped party took. That continues as anyone with moderate views basically gets kicked out of the party.
coffeegirl
wow. A Stranglers reference. How happy does that make me? Very.
coffeegirl
errr. nope. “sleazy”– that was the stranglers. must be getting old….
Samara Morgan
@David in NY: you missed my analysis of the recent Pew poll on anti-mormon sentiment and anti-Romney sentiment.
i think the only reason any conservative human would vote for Romney is because they think that Romney can beat Obama.
But what if he cant?
that means–
(31% x 25% of democrats) + (23% x 25% of independents) + (20% x 25% of republicans) ~= 8% of all democrats + 6% of all republicans + 5% of all independents.
We can discard the democrat vote because they wont vote for mitt anyways, leaving 11%.
Now the GOP needs 65% of the white vote to win if blacks and hispanics vote for O in the same percentages as 2008.
McCain got 55 of the white vote and Obama got 43% and McCain lost. Ronald Reagan won with 60%.
But no candidate has ever gotten higher than that.
the GOP base is 50% white evangelicals. Can a candidate win without base support?
so that is 63% of the 11% percent that said they would be less likely. That is roughly 7% of the white vote.
Traditionally a third of the white vote goes to dems, carter to obama.
so 33% plus 7% is 40%. Romney loses even if he gets the same percentage of the white vote as St. Reagan.
OmerosPeanut
Nice and sleazy does it.
Brachiator
@Dougerhead:
Yeah. Apparently so. Still, it’s hard to take any of these candidates seriously until there is some actual primary voting to separate noise from real political commitment on the part of voters. (an earlier response got moderated. Let me try a simpler reply)
ruemara
Doug, seriously. Who the fuck finds this douche “likeable”? After the insults he’s tossed around about black people, poor people, unemployed people, the fact that he wants to increase my tax burden, his general attitude towards women’s health, the douchy commercial he did a few years back-man, fuck him. The only one liking on him is Pat Buchanan.
The Raven
@JGabriel: “Oh sure, correct your typo and ruin my joke! Buzzkill”
Chuckle. The original, with correction, was “Since they
isare not constrained by honesty.”Hard to type with bird feet at two in the morning.
David in NY
@Samara Morgan: I think you are leaving out the evangelical’s quandary at choosing between a Mormon and a Black, Socialist, Muslim. I don’t think they’ll have as much trouble choosing as a pure statistical analysis out of actual context might lead one to believe.
David in NY
@Samara Morgan: Crap, last one fell into moderation. I repeat: I think you are leaving out the evangelicals’ quandary at choosing between a Mormon and a Black, Soshulist, Muslim. I don’t think they’ll have as much trouble choosing as a pure statistical analysis out of actual context might lead one to believe.
Samara Morgan
@David in NY: the base hates Romney.
some of them will not toe the line their corporatist overlords are laying down for them.
look at all the problems Boner is having wrangling the teabaggers right now.
if blacks and hispanics vote for Obama in the same percentages as 2008, the GOP candidate will lose.
they need 65% of the white vote to win. they cannot afford any base voters to defect, or to stay home.
btw, 65% is IMPOSSIBLE. even St. Reagan only got 60%.
White voters are declining as a percent of the electorate.
dark-skinned voters are surging.
Like Nate Silver says, demographics is destiny.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
I haz a sad that you did not respond to my comment on this earlier thread.
I would be interested to know your take. Because there is a bit more I could say about it.
Jack
That picture of Romney posing with the rest of Bain Capital reminds me of something between this and this.
The Raven
BTW, June 7 Alternet article, link. It appears that some very subtle propagandizing has been done on behalf of Cain.
Damn.
Samara Morgan
@THE: oh, pardon. i thought i took care of that with the utility of droning theory.
Droning doesnt work as a counterinsurgency tactic because it creates more hostiles than it eliminates.
It works in places like Libya where the US is on the side of the insurgents.
It works in places like Pak and Yemen because we can force client governments to be honest and give up the trump cards they were holding back as insurance.
Saleh wants to get back into power so he can oppress the shiia some more, so he’s being “helpful” to the US, his nominal ally.
over to you.
and Awlakis son was obviously a member of al-Q, so its “legal” under the AUMF.
Samara Morgan
@David in NY: but rasmussen and landline polling are going to lead the low-information conservative base to believe mitt is electable right up to the voting booth…unless they stay home in disgust.
Samara Morgan
as a muslimah….i have to say i don’t sanction al-Awlaki and al-Q and OBLs tactics.
i just understand the mechanism.
but neither do i condemn Obama’s tactics.
He is trying to stave off non-linear system collapse. more power to him.
Samara Morgan
Have you juicers ever thought about how gobsmackingly stupid and anti-democratic the whole meme of “counterinsurgency” is?
the “insurgents” just want their country back.
that is democracy in action, the consent of the governed.
THE
Yes but it’s not a counterinsurgency tactic. It is an attrition-war tactic. And attrition war is ultimately a form of economic warfare. It’s a saturation war technique.
I still think that the point you are missing is the breadth of the takedown of AQ that has taken place in the last say, 6 months, with so many takedowns of high ranking nodal individuals in so many places.
I think that the rate of takedown is now far beyond the ability of AQ to reconstitute itself, and so, like a virus that exceeds its coherent reproduction rate, in the presence of a too-high rate of mutating envents, it will decay and disappear.
I also am increasingly skeptical that you can explain the sheer scale and breadth of these takedowns as being due to special circumstances. X sold out Y or whatever. I believe it is prima facie evidence that US infotech has now advanced to the point that organizations like AQ can be reliably hunted down anywhere. There is some sort of identify-locate-takedown cycle of great power at work here. I have some sense what it may be.
There are other important changes I have been noticing. Like how rare collateral damage is becoming this year. There has been a steady improvement in this parameter since drones were first used, on the battlefield, but it is totally out of the ballpark now. It is clear that the US has adapted its tactics in important ways to achieve vastly more-reliable kills. They are using smaller or kinetic rounds and achieving positive id of targets before engaging. I have some idea of the technology that may be being used because of publicly available research.
Samara Morgan
what does the “take-down of al-Q” matter when we just created 4.5 million potential islamic terrorists (muslim orphans) in Iraq?
we destroyed our economy and our status and have nothing to show for it but an infinite supply of spare parts for the jihaadi factory.
THE
That’s a very legitimate question. I think you have to understand the difference between potential enemies and actively engaged. There may be lots of potential enemies, but if they never organize, train, plan, etc. They will never manage to carry out major operations like 9/11.
Of course isolated individuals may achieve some success but even then it all depends how well they have managed to “stay below the radar”. Then it’s a problem for regular policing and the problem is just basically a whole lot smaller.
But fwiw, even there, I think the infotech is getting more and more powerful. It’s really Minority Report in real life. So I think rogue individuals can sometimes get through but they do a lot less damage, and every time they do get through, the reinforcement learning system gets smarter at spotting them next time.
Just to give you an idea: I think it is entirely possible that by now the US has precise biometric and behavioural files on every single male adult person of any country the US is engaged in. e.g. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. We know they were sampling biometrics of Afghan males.
FWIW I don’t believe these initial dossiers were intended to be comprehensive. I believe they were a training set to train the AI.
THE
I don’t believe the war is what destroyed the US economy, the financial crisis is global.
This is how I see the problem: People keep trying to blame this and that for being THE cause of the economic crisis. But the truth is that these century-events are really perfect storms. They require a dozen separate factors to come together in just the right way for the crisis to happen. That’s why there are so many theories about what caused it. In a sense they are all true. It was all of these things and it took maybe fifty years to build.
Fixing it will require many different problems to be fixed up. There is no magic bullet. Though solving the energy crisis would possibly be the nearest one thing if only because it would allow you to power out at full throttle and screw the spectators.
THE
And that’s another thing.
The US retreat is not just from Iraq. It is from the entire Persian Gulf. China will be the largest oil importer by 2020. It is already just about to become the largest customer of KSA; it is the largest investor in Iraq and Iran. The US is not likely ever again to send a major army into the Persian Gulf litoral. Only 20% of US oil imports come from the Persian Gulf and OECD oil consumption is falling.
And China doesn’t care about the naval approaches quite so much because her pipeline, road and rail networks are snaking across Central Asia and connecting up even as we speak. The Chinese border is only 1000km from Iran–by land.
Edit: So I don’t think the US really has to worry about the Persian Gulf going much further forward. It really isn’t a part of America’s long-term future.
THE
The Arabs and Persians on the other hand need to learn Mandarin.