(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
__
Jon Chait at NYMag offers a possible explanation:
Who’s winning the presidential race? There’s an odd disconnect between the polls and the body language of the candidates. John Harris and Alexander Burns report from Tampa, “Republicans believe Obama’s governing defects should make a GOP victory virtually inevitable, but Romney’s political defects make it only a long-shot possibility.” Likewise, Mark Halperin, after extensive discussion with Obama’s campaign team, remains convinced that the campaign is not bluffing about its belief that it remains ahead in the race and unlikely to lose barring an unforeseen external event.
Could they be spinning? Possibly, though the more self-interested spin for Obama would probably emphasize the closeness of the race (send money! volunteer!) rather than the unlikelihood of defeat. In any case, the actual behavior of both campaigns suggests agreement on this point. Obama is running the same game plan he embarked on last year. Romney has changed things up, junking his original game plan — portraying Obama as a good guy over his head and hoping to make the election a referendum on the economy — to instead emphasize hard-edged attacks on the president and use Paul Ryan to shake up the race. So, however much Romney blusters, his deeds suggest a decided lack of confidence…
The best explanation I can muster is that the polls are assuming a much different, and more GOP-friendly, electorate than either party. ABC’s poll assumes that 78 percent of registered voters are white. That is … a whole lot of white people. The white share of the electorate has been dropping steadily for more than twenty years — from 87 percent in 1992 to 83 percent in 1996 to 81 percent in 2000, 77 percent in 2004, and 74 percent four years ago. Ron Brownstein’s recent reporting suggests that both campaigns expect an electorate that’s about 74 percent white. The same problem seems to appear in numerous other polls. Many of them don’t release their racial breakdowns, but those that do seem to imply electorates far whiter than the campaigns are banking on. As pollster Mark Blumenthal has exhaustively shown, Gallup has systematically underweighted the number of minorities in its polls, due to technical issues related to the difficulty of finding and weighting poll respondents.
Now, we don’t know what the racial composition of the electorate will look like. But it is utterly key. Assuming the 74 percent white makeup, and further assuming that Obama’s standing among nonwhite voters holds up as it has with high consistency, then Romney needs to win white voters by more than 20 points, perhaps by around 22 points, in order to prevail. Few polls show him doing that. The ABC poll has him winning whites by eighteen points…
It’s extremely white (and comparatively old) inside the Media Village bubble. Chait’s been pointing out the “last stand of the Elderly White Bigots” stragegy for a long time, and he’s right that a party apparatus which unironically embraces the James K. Polk strategy is not demonstrating a strong conviction of its own long-term survival…
***********
Apart from waiting for the Rethug Base to drop dead (possibly of anger-induced aneurisyms at the Tampa failparade), what’s on the agenda for the rest of the day?
Libby
Good Lord, I do love Toles. Most fun news of the afternoon, the twitter tells me a floor fight is brewing at the RNC over the rules power grab. About to go back and check on the status. Got my fingers crossed for the insurgent cons… (a new first)
Adding, I’m following Zeke Miller for updates on this one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree with Chait and so, based on the voter ID laws and other tactics, do Republicans. I also think Plouffe and Axelrod have in the can (I think is the phrase) some ads involving foreclosures and corporations are people that focus group really well.
However, call me a concern troll and a hand-wringer, someone will, the bar for the debates is going to be set so low that as long as the Romneybot doesn’t melt down and collapse in a heap of smoke and sprung gears, it’s going to be counted as a win.
kerFuFFler
Well, of course Obama is confident—-the Republicans have such an awful platform they are reduced to lying about everything.
I just read this about a culture in Tanzania and I half expect the GOP to adopt this as part of their platform: If a husband breaks wind, the wife must pretend that it was really she who discharged, and she must submit to scolding about it. Failure to accept responsibility can cost the negligent wife three barrels of beer.
kindness
Leaving work early to meet with contractor & cabinet guy for kitchen remodel. Hope to see only Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert for campaign news.
The web is kinda dull today.
LGRooney
Need to print out a thousand copies of that cartoon and send it to Romney, hang it from overpasses, drape it across Mormon churches…
Calouste
Romney was, by a distance, the candidate with the least defects during the primaries. Pope Santorum? Michele “batshit” Bachmann? Rick “too stupid even for the GOP” Perry? 20th Century Newt?
If the party can’t cough up a better candidate than Romney, the problem is with the party, not with the candidate.
seanindc
Rethug Base Drop – new dubstep band name or adventure sport?
Culture of Truth
Even Romney’s aides know the weathermen have forecast a 30% chance of a four-day fail parade.
On the plane they’re preparing reporters for Ron Paul disruptions, crazy-ass speeches from suspect friends like Chris Christie, a nervous and ineffectual Ann Romney, and for Quantum Mitt’s numbers to go down, not up after the Convention.
Steeplejack
This seems like a good open thread to tell the Juicetariat that Kathleen Turner has opened a two-month run in Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Post review here, with some attached video snippets.
One of the authors, Margaret Engel, is a friend of mine since college. I saw the play two years ago in Philadelphia and went to the dress rehearsal here last week. The play was good then but has been punched up and is really good now. Highly recommended to all libtards and Molly Ivins fans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Calouste: I thought funniest thing about the clown parade was that the loudest the calls got for a white knight to save the party from its voters was when Rick Santorum took the lead.
Ash Can
Repeating from the previous thread, because I can’t pimp the #RNCpowergrab Twitter feed enough. By far the most enormous sea of Tea Party butthurt I’ve ever seen. If you click on the link, bring popcorn — lots of it.
Mnemosyne
I know this has been my personal hobbyhorse, but I’ve gotta agree — there’s something showing up in the non-public polls that has the Republicans running scared and deciding that their only possible hope is to turn out as many racist white voters as possible.
Also, given that there has been a fairly major money gap between the two campaigns, of course the Obama campaign is saving as much ad money as they can for the home stretch. Unless you have a right-wing sugar daddy like Adelson or the Kochs with millions burning a hole in their pocket, you’d be an idiot to blanket the country with ads prior to the convention.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
OK, concern troll ;-) I’m actually sure you’re right that the media will call it a Romney win- or a least a tie- if he doesn’t
wet himselfhave smoke come out of his ears on stage, but I’m less confident that the media narrative matters. People who watch the debate aren’t going to think that Romney is Presidential timber just because he didn’t melt into a puddle, no matter how many times the media fluffers tell them that. And a lot of people do actually watch the debates, so what people see probably matters more than what the media says in its post mortems.mdblanche
It’s also extremely white (and comparatively old) inside the GOP inner circles. I suppose you would expect them to be more in touch with what the electorate really looks like today, since that’s their job, but they sure aren’t acting like it. They’re still actively alienating the people whose votes they’ll need next time. Why are they doing that if they know they’re going to suffer for it later?
As for James Polk, he was our most accomplished one-term president (what he accomplished was a mixed bag). He was a one-term president because he was terminally ill by the time of the next election and died after the shortest post-presidency in US history, just three months. Embracing that image is the Romney campaign’s way of admitting that if somehow their guy does get elected, even they don’t think there’s any way he can get re-elected. With friends like these…
Whidby
Percentages are meaningless.
Nate Silver has Obama walking away with it: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
Violet
I’m going to make banana bread using bananas I grew that just ripened over the weekend. I’m going to make two loaves–one to keep and one to give away. The first loaf I made on Sunday was delicious. Real butter makes all the difference.
bondirotta
Type “Ron Paul” into Twitter search box and watch the drama.
Major flare-up of GOP infighting during the first hours of the convention. If Ann flops and New Orleans floods, Mitt has the worst possible convention kick-off.
mdblanche
@Ash Can: Tea Party butthurt or Paulista butthurt? The latter’s a given, but if they’ve got the former too…
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack:
Um, how about Kathleen Turner fans? I don’t know about you, but as an older guy I find her hawt in a way that 20-something anorexic supermodels don’t do for me.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
IIRC, the media tried to spin the debates to McCain, but they made the mistake of running simultaneous focus groups, all of which said in real time that Obama had crushed it.
I’m guessing there will be no simultaneous focus groups this year to avoid that embarrassment.
Hunter Gathers
If the share of the white in November is 74%, I’ll eat my socks. If that does happen, it will be the first POTUS election where the share of the white vote is the same as the previous election to do that in what, almost 30 years?
A not insignificant amount of McCain voters are pining for the fjords. Gone to meet their maker. Pushing up daisies. Singing the bleedin’ Choir Invisible. They have ceased to be. These are ex voters.
Unless a lot of zombies show up at the polls, the share of the white vote is going to be between 72-70 percent. Voter suppression might keep it from hitting 70, but I don’t see how it sticks at 74.
And I don’t give a rat’s ass what anybody else says, Romney lacks the political skills to push his share of the white vote past 60%. He can push as much racial resentment as he wants, it takes skill to get that kind of share of the white vote. The only other person to get over 60% of the white vote since Nixon was Reagan. 28 years ago. He, and a lot of those voters, also pine for the fjords.
bondirotta
Michelle Malkin @michellemalkin
Whoever is claiming that the #RNCpowergrab is only/all about Ron Paul has no idea what’s going on.
Retweeted 261 times
Ash Can
@bondirotta: It’s hilarious!
@mdblanche: Looks like both. And Michelle Malkin is pissed. off.
Soylent Green
Probably an old saw, but I just heard it for the first time:
“Voting is like driving. To go in reverse, select R. To go forward, select D.”
bondirotta
Oohh….
Lauren G @geeoharee
I am irrelevant, old, and mad RT @jaketapper: Ron Paul tells Cavuto: “I am not intending to endorse anybody.”
Culture of Truth
I just heard from someone who stopped by Newt’s tent. Callista was prattling on about how America was going to invaded like Poland was in 1939. These people are demented.
Which reminds me – where Cole and ABL?
mai naem
@Calouste: But is this not the absolute description of a republican? There was not one selfish prick who was willing to 1/take one for the team is running against Obama and 2/actually work hard at running now to get ready for 2016. Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, McDonald and quite a few other senators could have run but like a typical repub, they want stuff handed to them on a silver platter at the right time so that they can maximize their benefit.
? Martin
In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist
James Buchanan, a moderate
Louis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He’s just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tarriffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump
schrodinger's cat
@Culture of Truth: By Canada or by Mexico?
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
My inner paranoid’s wondering if he’s trying some eleventy-dimensional chess thing to inspire Democrats to go overconfident and stay home.
bondirotta
Aaahhh…
jamey w. bennett @jameybennett
The Republican Convention is getting interesting. #RonPaul now has enough support to get on the nominating ballot.
Calouste
@Mnemosyne:
I’m also convinced that the simultaneous focus groups will be a one-off experiment. On the other hand, there were also flash polls taken immediately after the debates, and they might still be around.
Ash Can
Also too, I think this imbroglio is showing us real-time proof that the GOP is only going to go further over the cliff after this election. These people are livid, and if they really were louder than the “ayes” in the floor voice-vote, they’re numerous too. The only question is of how many will settle down and regain their composure going forward, and how many will remember this set-to and end up influencing the party leadership over both the near and long term.
mdblanche
@Hunter Gathers: Voter dislocation due to the recession disproportionately impacted minorities. Add in voter suppression and the minority share of the vote probably isn’t going up this time. But there’s still no way it’ll go all the way back to where it was a decade ago.
@Ash Can: Wow.
Culture of Truth
@schrodinger’s cat: Kenya
bondirotta
Ouch….
Lea Sheloush @LSheloush
Sununu take2. Ron Paul delegates silenced. TX Ron Paul supporters mic turned off. Yelling point of order. Roll call still delayed! #GOP2012
Shawn in ShowMe
@Chris:
I think you’ve got your eleven-dimensional chess backwards. People show up en masse for a coronation. Everybody loves a winner.
They show up when it’s really close to turn the tide.
They don’t show up when their guy/gal has no chance of winning.
General Stuck
Well, the Tampa Zoo is open for bidness. Those republicans are all disguised in human form, so watch yerselves.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
She does a great acting job, but she’s not eye candy in this piece. If you’re remembering Body Heat, that was 30 years ago and there has been a lot of mileage since then. Just sayin’.
mai naem
@Hunter Gathers: I do think you aren’t going to get the black turnout of 2008, partly because of the economy,partly because of the lack of novelty. Also, I think you’ll get more mad white people showing up. Add in voter suppression and the 74 percent doesn’t sound unreasonable. One last thing – you’re losing the FDR/New Deal old fart Dems because they’re dying,and they’re being replaced with a greater number of Eisenhower/Nixon old farts.
Chris
@Culture of Truth:
Who the fuck is going to invade America? Picture all the logistical problems with conquering and holding a country the size of Russia or China, and throw in the the two biggest oceans in the world between us and anyone who might try it. I don’t like to brag, but we’re pretty fucking unconquerable right here.
(Amazingly, I’ve actually read wingnuts who agree with me that an invasion is unthinkable, but are fucking stupid enough to attribute that to the fact that they own guns and all those foreigners are skeered. Yes, because that really has done Afghanistan a lot of good in terms of deterring invasions).
Roger Moore
@mdblanche:
He may have been terminally ill, but that wasn’t the only reason he didn’t run for reelection. Serving only one term was one of his campaign promises, and he followed through.
bondirotta
Michelle is running AMOK
Michelle Malkin @michellemalkin
The Silencer. RT @centex912: What role is John Sununu playing in the #rncpowergrab? @tpcarney @michellemalkin
Zifnab
@Whidby: Well, they’re not meaningless. Bush will forever be remembered as an “illegitimate” President in ways Reagan never will be.
I’d like to see Obama walk away with both the popular vote and the electoral vote, if only because it leaves Republicans that much less political space to claim Obama doesn’t have a mandate from the public.
Also, it would be nice if Obama’s coat-tails get us back the House or keep our margin in the Senate. Picking up a few Governor’s mansions or state legislatures would be good, too. This is much bigger than just the White House.
Violet
@bondirotta: Limbaugh was going on about how dangerous it is for the Republicans to ignore the “grassroots”. Then he took a call from a True Believer type that was spouting off websites and phone numbers for people to call their Rules Committee Delegates or something. The guy said people would stay home and not GOTV if they were ignored like this.
Limbaugh got a bit spooked, got rid of the caller and then alternated between saying Republicans would pull together, they can’t ignore the grassroots and Republicans would end up with a third party if they did ignore them. Didn’t make much sense, but seemed like he’d been thrown off by the guy’s True Believer statements.
From the sounds of all that, I don’t think Limbaugh will be the surprise speaker on Thursday.
colby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I dunno about that, but it is a legitimate concern. Still, most of the CW I’ve heard so far is that Romney is a very strong debater. Gonna be hard to Dubya that one.
Thoughtcrime
@Steeplejack:
I had the good fortune to see Molly speak at the 8th Annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture at UC Berkeley in 2004. Here it is on youtube (she appears at the 17 min mark):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8f6DgWLY0
Turgidson
I think they have a strong conviction that having a bunch of cranky assholes billionaires and Citizens United on their side, along with voter ID and other such shenanigans, can put off the demographic reckoning for a while yet if they win this time. And for as shitty a candidate as Romney is, the election still looks close enough to potentially steal.
Chris
@Ash Can:
Absolutely. I’ve said this many times before: if Romney loses, this will be the second time in a row that they’ll have nominated someone they see as a RINO and lost, and they’ll attribute it to his being a RINO. We’ll be lucky if their 2016 candidate isn’t wearing white sheets and a dunce hat.
(Not that Romney winning, if it happens, will lead them to the opposite conclusion that RINOs are good after all – they’ll simply give themselves all the credit for the victory).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The disconnect between the polls and the campaigns got me wondering – are all polls turning to the Rassumen model. After all, pollsters make their money off selling polls and who’s interested in polling a runaway race? Who knows, maybe white male Republicans will turn out in unprecedented numbers while everyone else stays at home.
Shinobi
I can’t help but wonder how much the racial polling component is confounded by the cell phone issue. I wonder if non-whites are more likely to use exclusively cell phones, similar to the trend among younger voters. Not only are they missing non whites, but they are missing people who don’t have a land line, and especially missing non white people who don’t have a landline, who I would bet do not swing conservative.
Also, Here is the reason all of your conservative friends think The Newsroom is a terrible show.
Chris
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Yeah. I did say “inner paranoid.” Having grown up in post-Reagan America, there’s a neurotic part of me that’s afraid to believe it every time liberals seem to be doing well.
JPL
@Ash Can: Is this true?
Marinara Islands sit in front and states like Minnesota that voted for Ron Paul get the nosebleeds
kindness
@Violet:
And here I was all happy to have made pot butter over the weekend. No I did not make the butter. That was Costco. I just grew the weed. Came across a bag of trimmings in the garage and thought, well I should do something with this!
ally
Has anyone seen this weird, cringe-inducing little clip of Romney and his family in their kitchen with Chris Wallace? Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wQd7ywLcmUU
In it, Tagg explains that Dad is served first at family dinners and usually is finished wolfing his food (my words) before the others even have a chance to fill their plates.
There’s a metaphor for the rest of us in here somewhere…
bondirotta
LOL
@darganthompson
Police keep a close watch on Ron Paul supporters as they gather to pray for the nomination. #2012unfiltered http://instagr.am/p/O4uyAEgUKt/
View photo
Elisabeth
@Ash Can:
heh ~
Chris
@Shinobi:
And the fact that pollsters tend to underestimate Hispanic-speaking households – have they learned to compensate for that yet?
bondirotta
The drama!!!
Rob Port @robport
Notice the vote counter at the RNC Convention is only reading back the Romney votes? Ron Paul votes not being counted.
Culture of Truth
Aug. 28 (New York Times) Mitt Romney’s supporters passed new rules governing future primaries over the loud boos of Ron Paul supporters and other conservative activists…
When Mr. Boehner called for the “ayes,” the crowd roared in
the affirmative. But when he called for the “nays,” an even louder “no” echoed through the convention hall, led by supporters of Mr. Paul.
Mr. Boehner ignored them, pressing ahead by saying the rules
would be adopted “without objection,” even as the crowd continued to roar its disapproval.
Sounds like things are off to a great start…
Ben Franklin
Obama, wears suspenders and a belt.
To be so confident, suggests a loyal and stalwart group, which is good, in and of itself, but it is not some secret fact none of us are aware of right?
The European Vacation could be a hint of more to come.
There is a problem with sourcing on Mitt’s behalf.
Elisabeth
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I wonder how confident OFA is in its infastucture and GOTV efforts. They’ve been on the ground for months.
lamh35
I’d rather gouge my eyes out with alcohol doused scalpels, while being force fed raw habanero peppers while pirhanna are eating at my toes and tapeworms are working their ways thru my intestines on their way to my bowels…rather than watching Miss Ann speech or any part of the RNC…#SERIOUSLY.
I’m so glad for twitter and blogs.
Ash Can
Apparently Sarah Palin has weighed in too, and not on the side of Boehner/Priebus/Romney. Damn, I need to go fetch some more popcorn.
Morgan Warstler
@Whidby:
This is Nate Silver predicting in early September 2010 that the GOP had only a 1 in 4 chance of gaining 60 seats – they gained 60 seats.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/g-o-p-has-2-in-3-chance-of-taking-house-model-forecasts/
BTW, he put their chances of getting 54 seats at 1 in 3 – what he now has Romney at…
mai naem
Oooh, I just saw my first black person at the GOP convention. OMG I just saw my first black person. It was a woman in the GA delegation. I am so excited.
Chris
@Culture of Truth:
What are the new rules that are so controversial? Or are the Paultards just being tards on general principle?
Ash Can
Apparently the Ron Paul delegates are getting completely steamrollered at the con. As in, their votes are being ignored by the chair and their mics are getting cut. These people are going to remember this in the upcoming months; it remains only to be seen how numerous and/or organized they actually are.
ETA: There are also reports of Paul delegates being replaced by Romney delegates by the GOP leadership. Fun!
pragmatism
@Chris:
According to the Red Dawn remake, N. Korea.
kay
I wonder if they’re confident because they know more.
They do an awful lot of voter contact in swing states. It’s anecdotal or a bunch of data points to one canvasser or in one county but they collect it all and it’s not a random sample of likely voters, it’s voters, with names and addresses. They’re ID’ing voters, and they’ve been doing that since March.
I remember when the ’08 campaign started and I was listening to the plan, locally, and it sounded ludicrous: “it’s a big country, you’re going door to door?”
But, yeah, they were. Actually. Door to door.
Maybe they think they have real numbers, so not so much “confident in winning” but confident in where they are at this point in the cycle, in swing states.
? Martin
@Chris: Two:
1) That state delegates in nonbonding states need to be chosen on election day. They can’t wait until weeks later when the Romney voters are bored and depressed and let the Paul voters win all of the delegates. Iowa is particularly displeased with this rule, as they’ve done it as they’ve done it for ages.
2) That the GOP can change the rules at any time for any reason.
JustAnotherBob
@Chris:
“We’ll be lucky if their 2016 candidate isn’t wearing white sheets and a dunce hat.”
Make that “unlucky”.
A total walkaway would be so sweet….
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Elisabeth: They’ve been the masters of that since 2007. And looking how utter incompetent Mittens has been at handling the Ron Paul kids I suspect people will observing November 12th that Romney’s get out the vote out effort could have used more work.
Hill Dweller
@Morgan Warstler: Obama has very good pollsters working for his campaign. They predicted, within one state, the electoral college numbers long before the election in ’08. I think it’s safe to say they aren’t relying on Nate Silver’s models.
If Obama loses, it won’t because they didn’t run a good campaign.
gogol's wife
@ally:
That is really telling. Both the substance of the anecdote and that Tagg would think it would make Mitt more appealing: A man who can’t stand to wait for his own grandchildren to be served first. I guess it’s not surprising, since they were the ones who told the Seamus story too, apparently thinking others would find it charming.
John O
Obama is going to whip out the Drug War when the time is right, to mobilize the youth vote. Hopefully about 10 seconds before they vote, to accommodate the attention span.
They’re confident because they have some bullets in the barrel, and they’re going to use them. It’s going to be the filthiest campaign of my lifetime, as befits the age we live in, IMO.
? Martin
@Chris:
Gay messicans, as usual.
muddy
@ally: They do come across as a pack rather than regular people. If they were on Grimm we’d be seeing their faces stretch, as Pa Mittens assimilates the lion’s share of the butt and guts.
I think Ben is the Omega Wolf in this scenario, he’s not in a lot of the pics and he has no children.
John O
@Hill Dweller:
Whoa! Are you dissing Nate? He’s been within .3% of every election I’ve ever checked him on.
J.D. Rhoades
Man, that #rncpowergrab Twitter hashtag turns up some truly world class batshit craziness. The Teabaggers are PISSED OFF. it remains to be seen if they turn into this cycle’s version of the PUMAs–noisy but ineffectual. But right now, I’m enjoying the screeching.
BGinCHI
Only in TX:
I guess the skunk had no comment.
ally
@gogol’s wife:
Thanks, I feel the same way! Wish this thing would get more circulation. Well, there’s probably more where that came from…
...now I try to be amused
@Calouste:
BooMan observes that in order to survive the challenges of his primary opponents running to his right on this issue or that, Romney ended up endorsing the most extreme positions on every issue. So collectively the GOP primary field produced a more extreme candidate than any of them were individually.
Shawn in ShowMe
@mai naem:
I agree that there will be a .00001% downtick in black male turnout thanks to the five men in the Tavis Smiley/Cornell West contingent. However, Barack and Michelle are the most revered black couple among black women since Osiris and Isis walked the earth. And there are more black women than black men. I expect overall turnout to be even greater than 2008.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Well he is the patriarch so he gets to eat first, everyone else is a step below and has to wait their turn. Does this have any thing to do with Mormon theology?
Redshift
@Calouste:
I’m firmly convinced that the difference between the debates in 2000 (when the media declared Bush the winner if he succeeded in not drooling on himself) and 2004 (when they grudgingly called them a draw) were that there were Internet polls that lots of us made a concerted effort to freep. They’re completely bogus and easily manipulated, of course, but media people ignore all that and love them. And even considering that, the fact that our side was able to freep almost all of them better than the wingnuts arguably did undercut “center-right nation” narrative.
ally
@muddy:
So true!
Did you catch the women’s frozen faces after Tagg’s “humorous” remark? Seemed like there would be hell to pay after Wallace left.
? Martin
@John O: I think so too. I think the gay marriage thing was supposed to be a convention announcement, and Biden dropped it early.
But I think there’s going to be some good turnout activities here in the next month.
Calouste
@mai naem:
Christie and MacDonald only got elected in 2009, so starting a run for President when they only would be in office for slightly more than a year would have been problematic.
Senators, well, they have a fairly close-up look at Obama on a day-to-day basis, and for the first time in decades there was no sitting Senator running for President. Every one of them who has ambitions gave it a pass.
? Martin
@BGinCHI: Stand your ground!
ally
@schrodinger’s cat:
Probably!
But most of the Mormons I know are much more polite than that.
Culture of Truth
@Chris: NYT:
“Advisers to Mr. Romney had proposed rules that would make it harder for a candidate like Mr. Paul to amass delegates to mount a challenge to a more established candidate. The anger over that move had lingered for the last several days.”
schrodinger's cat
@ally: Or it could just be Mitt.
Bill E Pilgrim
At the convention:
Were they to win I predict that they’d soon stop even mentioning Romney, it would just be President Ryan and his sidekick, with Romney reduced to yelling “You are right, sir!” in a loud voice now and then.
John O
@? Martin:
He’d be pretty stupid not to. It’s not a very partisan issue anymore in terms of the demo that cares. Net win in votes even if all he does as reclassify MJ as a Schedule I.
(I think. I get my drug schedules messed up.)
kay
I’ve become completely addicted to the comments on Nate Silver’s site.
I can’t stop reading them. Everything he writes the conservative commenters question his motives.
Everything.
They’re LITERATE, POLITE but still paranoid crazy people. Buried under even the most reasonable conservative is a Tea Partier trying to get out.
dead existentialist
@Ash Can: That’s some funny shit there, that is. The party of authoritarianism squawks when the bosses tell them what to do. Somebody call a whambulance!
Ben Franklin
Some Paul backers are ready to get behind Romney, even if reluctantly.@Chris:
They’re getting deals done.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019005288_localconvention28m.html?prmid=4939
? Martin
@schrodinger’s cat: Maybe. But I think Romney’s just an entitled asshole, as most self-preserved patriarchs are.
General Stuck
@Ash Can:
I doubt there are more fierce and fanatic supporters of any politician on the planet, or at least in this country. They are the closest thing we have to terminator robots, single minded for whatever they have directions for, and they never ever quit. A thorn in the GOP from here on out may be an understatement, I suspect, at this steamrolling by the Mittster and GOP proper hatchet men.
Shinobi
@Morgan Warstler: 1 in 4 is a pretty solid chance actually. So is 1 in 3. He wasn’t wrong.
Cris (without an H)
I guess Jon Chait isn’t on OFA’s mailing list. Two or three times a day I get emails from Jim or Joe or Rufus or Julianna or whoever saying OMG we got outraised again this is how we will LOSE plz send money thx.
BruinKid
Kay will probably want to write about this, but Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) just fired the two Democratic election board members who wanted to extend early voting hours on the weekend.
Fired. For wanting to give people more chances to vote.
General Stuck
@BGinCHI:
Well now. That stinks.
Ruckus
@mdblanche:
Why are they doing that if they know they’re going to suffer for it later?
As much as we say the long con has been going on for 40-50-60 yrs they really don’t think long term. Just like their corp masters they think in the shortest terms possible. Next quarter/next election. If we have high profits this quarter/election that’s when we worry about the next one.
They think if they win every quarter/election then the long term will take care of itself.
Morgan Warstler
@John O:
Uhm no he wasn’t.
At this time in 2010 he was off by MORE than he currently has Romney at…
Nov 1, 2010 he took time to write 5 REASONS the Dems might not lose the House.
Facts are facts are facts, you can read his archives from Sept-Nov 2010 and see clearly how he downplays Dem losses right up until a beating of epic proportions.
To BE CORRECT Nate needs to have the Sept 1 2010 article saying “Dems likely to lose 60 seats” – instead he was at 1:4.
Chris
@General Stuck:
For all his vaunted “grassroots appeal,” Paul’s never been all that good at getting votes. I don’t think he’d even be able to pull out a decent Ross Perot/George Wallace type of third party campaign, let alone Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe he could be their Nader.
Thanks for all the responses, people. Sounds like the convention people are being epic fucking toolbags, but then, so are most Ron Paul voters. It is a good day to popcorn.
Shinobi
@ally: It’s funny because there is a totally NORMAL way to frame that behavior. “We let the adults without kids go first so they don’t have to wait while all the kids get their meat cut for them. Grandpa’s usually done before us by the time we manage to wrangle them all.”
The BEHAVIOR isn’t actually that weird. That’s how things went in my family, Non kid wrangling adults, then kids, then parents. (Because seriously people, kids need to learn about waiting.) The way he put it is what makes it sound creepy and odd.
Calouste
If Ron Paul had any priciples, which, as a libertarian, he doesn’t have besides IGMFY, he would walk out of the convention and endorse Gary Johnson.
Joel
@Morgan Warstler: 1) the first person was wrong in asserting that a 70% chance of victory means assured victory. It means a 70% chance of victory.
however
2) presidential polling is considerably more extensive than congressional polling and the degree of confidence in the presidential predictions will be much higher in that case.
Ash Can
Aaaand according to that Twitter feed, Rush Limbaugh was bemoaning the actions of the GOP leaders this afternoon too. Good times.
Turgidson
@Roger Moore:
I bet there’s no way the media shows the results of the instant reaction polls this time. The ones that always showed Obama mopping the floor with McCain.
It would probably only be more lopsided this time, what with Romney lacking even the “grumpy grandpa” charm that McCain was able to pull off, and providing so little substance to his answers that even the low-info voters will catch on to his grift.
Roger Moore
@…now I try to be amused:
And the base still worries that he won’t govern as a conservative if he’s elected.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Chris: Confident people tend to go and vote, where depressed people tend to stay home.
Bubblegum Tate
@Ash Can:
Oh my god, that is so fucking amazing. This one’s a beaut:
mai naem
Stupid John Kasich mentioned John Glenn. I imagine Reince Probus’s head was exploding. I thought they said Missouri was going to take the Mittster over the top. BTW WTF why do these American territories all have Republican governors? I thought they were all pretty safe Dem. votes. What is this? They’re trying to emulate Massachusetts?
BTW why do all these governors report their low unemployment rates? I thought Obummer was doing a horrible job on jobs??? I don’t understand.
Joel
@Morgan Warstler: Now you’re just posting nonsense. Are you familiar with Nate’s line of work?
TO BE RIGHT, Silvers’ former colleagues should have picked with absolute certainty that R.A. Dickey would be a plausible Cy Young candidate this year.
Joel
@Morgan Warstler: Now you’re just posting nonsense. Are you familiar with Nate’s line of work?
TO BE RIGHT, Silvers’ former colleagues should have picked with absolute certainty that R.A. Dickey would be a plausible Cy Young candidate this year.
joes527
@Ash Can:
Of course she is. It’s a day ending in “ay”.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Morgan Warstler:
You’re not going to convince stat geeks that their favorite stat geek is lacking. Ain’t gonna happen. To me, Nate Silver is a nice poll aggregrator for folks who don’t have time to follow battleground elections.
But in truth, ever regular on this site has the time to read the local newspapers for battleground states. You getter depth and breadth that way. For example, Claire McCaskill was a clear underdog only if you had no idea who her challenger was or how he got to be her challenger or his propensity to say stupid shit. Polls ain’t gonna tell you that.
Shinobi
@Morgan Warstler: @Morgan Warstler: From the perspective of someone who deals with telling the future for a living (Forecasting) I have to say that every estimate one ever makes of the future is wrong. IT might be wrong by a little or it might be wrong by a LOT. But forecasts are ALWAYS wrong.
What Nate does that I like is that he provides ranges, and probabilities for a given outcome. Things change and those probabilities can change. His 3/4 gives you an idea of how confident he is of that estimate, and i would say 3/4 is not actually that confident.
And even when you are confident enough to give something a 99 out of 100 chance, sometimes 1 is your number.
Close, directional, based on sound fundamentals, that is what matters. It is impossible to be 100% right about these things 100% of the time. Political polling is especially tricky because you are modeling population behavior which is notoriously tricky, and using surveys to do it. Survey based models of population behavior are some of the most volatile least accurate metrics that we can use. I think considering the data he has available, he’s doing a good job.
Every poll is wrong except for the one on that second Tuesday in November.
Cris (without an H)
@Ash Can: Thank you for posting #RNCPowerGrab, that is a thing of beauty. Dig this:
Guess the punchline? Go on, guess who he thinks “took on the party bosses and won!”
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
lamh35
@Ash Can: so i guess da grifter isn’t gonna be the “mystery speaker” on Thursday
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Now, now. At least he never went Birther.
Huh?
[consults the news from a few days ago]
Oh bugger.
chopper
jesus, what a fuckin mess. they need to just hypnotize everyone when romney walks out on the stage.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOCHOAD!
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
And who’s that going to be, Sarah? Let me guess: not you.
joes527
@Chris:
Oh, so you are just going to dismiss our crafty neighbors to the north? Do the streets have to be running with maple syrup before America wakes up??
Shawn in ShowMe
@Bubblegum Tate:
Looks like he is endorsing Mario and Luigi.
The Ancient Randonneur
Hahahahahahahahahah Meet the GOP’s 40 Year Old Virgin?
mai naem
God, why do the Vermont Republicans even show up? What does Nate have on Vermont going for Romney? 1 in 50?
chopper
@joes527:
i was gonna say, has malkin ever been happy in her entire life? cause that lady is always pissed.
Redshift
@colby:
Um, we’ve seen Romney in debates, in the primaries. He comes across as a condescending dick, punctuated with his “tell,” the humorless laugh. No, his problems aren’t the same as Dubya, but taking that attitude with the President of the United States isn’t going to go over well with anyone who isn’t a hardcore Republican.
But if the media want to portray him as a strong debater beforehand, so much the better. It wouldn’t surprise me if his campaign is as incompetent at the expectations game as they seem to be at everything else.
ppcli
@Mnemosyne: Oh, my yes. I had forgotten those. My favorite was one of the Fox news ones where the focus group/announcer guy said something like “Well, as you can see it’s split about 50-50” when everyone watching could see from the show of hands that only three or four people out of 40 or so thought McCain hadn’t lost.
Rarely do you see such a pure instance of the “Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” gambit played seriously.
ira_NY
Perhaps the body language and all is because Obama’s team has Romney’s returns and will leak them when the time is right.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Mnemosyne:
No need: We have Twitter this time.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
That’s probably the only sane idea they’ve had in this election (at least if you’re talking about their definition of “conservative.”) It is pretty hilarious, though — the wingnut base created an environment where a candidate has to pretend to agree with them on everything to succeed, no matter his previous positions, and now they’re unhappy because he might just be pretending.
The Moar You Know
@Ash Can: Oh, the TeaTards just got locked out of the quiet back rooms. How delicious.
What did they think, that Romney, of all people, was going to let them call the tune?
kindness
@ira_NY: Karl Rove would blame Obama. Hell, Karl would try to say the returns are Obama’s.
Pay no attention to the name at the top of the forms. These are Obama’s tax returns.
Thoughtcrime
@J.D. Rhoades:
Hey Teabaggers: remember, it’s not “legitimate” rape that the GOP is doing to you if your tubes don’t spastically reject Romney being implanted.
edit:
“you rubes” in place of “your tubes” works too.
eric
@Redshift: you are right. He is objectively bad. And they are objectively bad, made even more so because they cant say how great Obama is on his feet because that apostasy is unforgivable.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
I think it’s more that Romney has been pandering to them since day one, but they understand enough to recognize that it’s just pandering rather than conviction. They really want someone with a history of governing their way, not just somebody who will tell them what they want to hear. Meanwhile, Mitt is going crazy trying to prove how conservative he is in a doomed attempt to win their allegiance. He may get their votes, but he’ll never get their trust.
Randy P
@Shinobi:
That’s a reasonable hypothesis, but my recollection is that Zogby set up his polling methods based on this hypothesis, and so far (IIRC) he’s been outperformed by all the traditional polls.
I don’t follow the ins and outs of polling all that closely these days even though I am somewhat of a statistics geek. So my recollection could be wrong/out of date.
Edit: On the other hand, this random wingnut’s one-line blog entry makes me think that Zogby might be pulling ahead of the pack now in terms of accuracy. If a wingnut thinks it’s a lie, it’s probably objectively true.
Corner Stone
@joes527:
ulggggggh…
/Homer with donut sound
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Chris:
We also have weapons capable of vaporizing any troop transports before they got within 199 miles of our shores. So there’s that, too.
(Unless of course North Korea has some super secret MEGASUBMARINE in the works).
Redshift
I think a good part of the confidence is because the Obama campaign staff is really competent. I heard a story from a politician earlier this year that the best thing for a campaign is to have the votes in different areas come out the way you predicted, because that means you understand where your votes are coming from, and where you need to focus to get them. If you lost, it means that you know the votes weren’t there, whereas if you don’t know that, you’re just rolling the dice.
The Obama campaign knows where their votes are, and they’re doing what they need to to get them. The Romney campaign, by all indications, only has a vague idea where to get the votes they would need to win, and they’re rolling the dice at every turn.
whidby
@Morgan Warstler
Setting aside whether predicting hundreds of individual house races is a good proxy for predicting accuracy of electoral college results – Silver was hardly taken by surprise by the outcome of the GOP’s gains. From the article to which you linked:
“G.O.P. Has 2-in-3 Chance of Taking House, Model Forecasts
Republicans have a two-in-three chance of claiming a majority of House seats in November, the FiveThirtyEight forecasting model estimates. And their gains could potentially rival or exceed those made in 1994, when they took a net of 54 seats from the Democrats.”
mai naem
@Corner Stone: Not maple syrup,it’s got to be that black stuff from fracking mentioned in an earlier thread, you know the stuff the Wasilla Hillbilly calls Black Gold.
moonbat
@Shawn in ShowMe: I would like to marry this comment. Just saying…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@joes527:
Red Dawn indeed.
lamh35
Umm wow. I guess this is this year’s “community organizer” bit. Are people really falling for this? We are talking about the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama not first time Senator Obama. Doesn’t the job of POTUS involve “running things”
But here I go talking in this reality rather than fantasy land.
Bonus Quote of the Day
Ugh thi Reince dude is an douche.
Corner Stone
@mai naem: That would actually result in the same noise being made but…
ulggggggh…
/homeowner being poisoned by his own well sound
Litlebritdifrnt
@lamh35:
I suppose working in a law firm and then teaching are not considered “real jobs” these days. Who knew?
Calouste
@lamh35:
Said Reince Priebus, whose experience is limited to politics and a law office.
What of course meant to say is “that boy can’t even sell watermelon or fried chicken”.
I doubt btw that Romney has ever done a garage sale. That means there would be proles on his property.
Chris
@lamh35:
I remember a wingnut relative getting into a facebook political argument with my sister and at some point mentioning what a shame it was that there weren’t more people in the family who’d gone into the private sector like him. I love how these people think that because THEIR job (or their dream job) happens to be running a business, there’s something terribly fishy or lacking about the people (e.g. the overwhelming majority) who haven’t.
Newsflash: your job is only one of many in society. If you were very good at it, great, that’s something that should definitely be considered if you run for office. But no, the simple fact that you were a businessman does NOT make you more qualified to be president than the majority of your countrymen who weren’t. Any more than Plato being a philosopher made him specially qualified to be a king. Any more than Khomeini being a Shi’a cleric made him specially qualified to be a Supreme Leader. Any more than Heinlein being a military veteran made him qualified to be the only person with the right to vote. The world needs businessmen too, but for the love of Christ, get the fuck over yourselves.
Redshift
@lamh35: They seem determined to run through every one of the ineffectual attacks from 2008. It reminds me of wingnuts speaking in code (“Teleprompter! Heh, heh!”) and not getting why no one else is laughing.
Personally, I hope people like Priebus continue to be big enough idiots to think that they can win with ideas like “Sure, he’s run the most powerful country in the world, but has he run a company? You’d rather have a Wall Street private equity guy, right?”
Chuck Butcher
Want to make any bets whither the Paulistas?
Anya
@lamh35: So, USA is even more insignificant than a garage sale? That boy is a moron. Michael Steel was made fun of constantly but this idiot is tolerated. White privilege at work.
Linda Featheringill
@eric: #139
The debates:
Team Obama has been working on the debates for weeks now. Do you think that Team Romney will practice for the debates?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@lamh35:
“President Obama’s never run a company. He hasn’t even run a garage sale or seen the inside of a lemonade stand.”—RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, quoted by the Associated Press.
Let’s see:
“After graduation from Whitewater as a member of the Delta Chi fraternity, Priebus served as a clerk for the Wisconsin State Assembly Education Committee. He then proceeded to the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1998, Priebus graduated with a J.D. degree cum laude from the University of Miami after serving as President of the Student Bar Association. He moved back to Wisconsin and became a member of the State Bar, and subsequently joined Michael Best & Friedrich, a Wisconsin law firm, where he eventually became a partner, practicing in the firm’s government and public policy division.[3]”
Then he became a full-time politician.
So, uh, Priebus had about the same career as Obama – law student, law professor, practicing lawyer – but he wasn’t as good at it – University of Miami instead of Harvard, Wisconsin instead of Chicago.
lamh35
If this is a real excerpt, I’m already saying Bleh!
“Ann Romney’s Convention Speech — Excerpts ”
http://nationaljournal.com/2012-election/ann-romney-s-convention-speech-excerpts-20120828
“…Tonight I want to talk to you from my heart about our hearts.
I want to talk not about what divides us, but what holds us together as an American family. I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours.
Tonight I want to talk to you about love.
…
Mitt’s dad never graduated from college. Instead, he became a carpenter.
He worked hard, and he became the head of a car company, and then the governor of Michigan.
When Mitt and I met and fell in love, we were determined not to let anything stand in the way of our life together.
..
I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a “storybook marriage.” Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer.
A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.”
Chris
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
It’s been said so many times as to become cliche, but Republicans love to project their own faults onto others.
Another example would be their attacks on businessmen or business arrangements they don’t like as “crony capitalists” while defending to the death the oil sector and defense contractors.
Paul
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Priebus isn’t even worthy of tying President Obama’s shoe laces.
JPL
@lamh35: A real marriage actually doesn’t support oneself on stock Daddy gave you while you were in college. They really do overuse the word real.
arguingwithsignposts
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
How does he know this?
joes527
@Chuck Butcher: If the Paulistas don’t get their day in the sun, Eric son of Eric is gonna get his trike force so … ummm … send some artichokes … to someone … or something.
lamh35
@lamh35: According to Greg Sargent on twitter, Ann’s speech is “more emotional” than reported.
So the narrative has been set. Ann’s speech is a success before it has even been given.
JPL
#RNCpowergrab is so much fun.
They weren’t really chanting “mitt” they were chanting “shit”
hep kitty
Oh well, looks like Ron Paul had/has no principles after all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@arguingwithsignposts: He ran a campaign that beat the allegedly politically brilliant Clintons and kicked the ass of the man 98% of the Beltway press want to adopt them
hep kitty
Hurted fee-fees:
Litlebritdifrnt
Boehner is speaking, he is obviously drunk, he is talking about “a guy walks into a bar” bad idea.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@? Martin:
We did. He was family. Third cousin several times removed, IIRC.
On a more serious note, we’re starting to hear rumblings of “I don’t know if I can vote for him” from local wingnuts.
dance around in your bones
Ok, I am watching the Boner at the RNC and am just about ready to shoot my TV..
Lies, and LIES and MORE LIES!
All while I am pulling out, folding and stapling approx. 600 little reading booklets for my grandkid’s first grade class.
Since I suppose it’s too expensive to either pay the teacher or an assistant(s) to do this kinda stuff…..oh, fuck it.
I’m going back to listening to Pandora’s Leonard Cohen channel.
LanceThruster
@kerFuFFler:
We are all truly “naked apes” (precursor to “both sides do it”).
Steeplejack
@lamh35:
Yeah. How about “running the most powerful country in the world”? Does that work for you, Reince? Jesus, what tools they are.
Roger Moore
@joes527:
That could get really ugly. My home town suffered a molasses spill while I was growing up, and it was a major PITA. How fast does molasses flow in January? Fast enough to cause problems when there are tons of it.
Anoniminous
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Notice that Boner doesn’t know any jokes starting, “A Congressman walked out of a bar …”
Geoduck
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
If I was team Obama, I’d now be horribly tempted to set up a lemonade stand out in front of the White House, but I suppose that’s a bad idea. They could sell White House brand beer to the adults..
Steeplejack
@Chuck Butcher:
Good piece.
hep kitty
@JPL: lol, my tweets on that are still loading
LanceThruster
Certainly not Mitt dying in some Kolob forsaken rice paddy. The honor of that sort of sacrifice is reserved for you people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You’re all better citizens than I am, I can’t watch any of these humps.
J.D. Rhoades
@hep kitty: CBS totally ignored this story. Anyone else pick it up?
Chris
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
It’s never occurred to me before to wonder how it must have felt for Republicans in the late sixties to watch the party they despised tear itself to shreds.
Something like this, I imagine.
quannlace
Do you really want to start invoking Romney Sr.? The man who returned a portion of his ceo bonus back into the company if he thought is was too much? Who started a profit-sharing program for his employees? Who released more than 10 years of his tax returns when he was running for President? Who’s know for saying, when someone asked what he thought of the phrase, ‘rugged indiviualism.” “It’s a political banner to hide naked greed.”
J.D. Rhoades
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Seeing a lot of this on Twitter. I’m taunting them, telling them they know they’ll vote for Romney, the Romneyites know it, everyone’s ignoring them, and that’s why they got screwed.
I love stirring these bastards up.
hep kitty
Lane Turner “I Built It” WTF is a Lane Turner?
Also, if you have a sick child, start your own business – Lt. Gov. of DE
hep kitty
The Oak Ridge Boys singin Amazing Grace/Tea Party Right Wing Christianists officially take over the republican party.
Percysowner
@Mnemosyne: IIRC, the media tried to spin the debates to McCain, but they made the mistake of running simultaneous focus groups, all of which said in real time that Obama had crushed it.
I’m guessing there will be no simultaneous focus groups this year to avoid that embarrassment.
Water balloon
I’d like to hear more expert commentary from junk mail “mogul” Morgan Warstler.
Chuck Butcher
@Steeplejack:
thanks, blogwhoring isn’t very rewarding if nobody likes the piece…
I know I’m shameless, but hell – I miss having a readership in the hundreds versus dozens…
hep kitty
Fuck these people. They act like they are the only people who have ever worked a fucking day in their life.
NO. Not everybody can be a fucking business owner. SHUT THE FUCK UP. I know it’s hard to understand this, but other people get to/have to do other things. See, there are these people, they’re called consumers.
Again, fuck you. That goes for you, too, traitorous republican eye-candy-dates.
hep kitty
Sen. Kelly Ayote
Tony the Wonderhorse
Nate at the 538 blog, which is the best thing since ice cream, puts Obama at 70% to win, Romney at 30%
He can be trusted. While he is not perfect in his predictions, history has demonstrated he’s closer than almost anybody else.