I just got a couple “Dead Zone”-style premonitions: (1) Romney may make Obama sign, or at least verbally consent, to some kind of a pledge and (2) tomorrow’s serious person standard line will be “it wasn’t so much what the candidates said, as what they didn’t, neither candidate showed a willingness to tackle the very real problems this nation is facing blah blah blah”.
Any premonitions from you guys?
Roger Moore
The Village will see and report on a completely different debate from the one the rest of us see.
ETA: Also, too, anyone who tries to play debate drinking games will wind up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
Spectre
My Prediction…?
Pain.
KG
my premonition is that Romney is going to say something incredibly stupid, like stoooooooooooooooooooopid, and it will effectively end his campaign. he had a tendency to do that in the primary debates, but it usually ($10,000 bet) got lost because there were so many other participants and he was the front runner.
Ben Franklin
Two cautious souls who wear suspenders and belts, look both ways before crossing the street, meet. One desperate, one confident;
“There he goes again…” moment.
schrodinger's cat
Agreed about the second point, bald Dowd was saying it on This Week, this Sunday.
SiubhanDuinne
What kind of pledge? I think Obama’s too canny a politician to allow himself to be drawn into a verbal trap.
Omnes Omnibus
Cable networks will not use the instant feedback mechanisms from 2008. They instantly and completely contradicted punditubby analysis.
Forum Transmitted Disease
This (OT to the subject at hand, BTW) is bad news. For everybody.
pj
“I took the Oath of Office and expect to take it again in Jan. of 2013. That’s the only pledge that matters.”
JPL
My stomach is a mess. I’ve already cleaned the pantry, ran errands and did some weeding. Fortunately, my yard is large enough that I can probably spend the next several hours weeding.
@KG: I like your attitude.
japa21
I still think he is going to let something slip that he got from a classified intelligence briefing, something that would cause a problem somewhere. The Obama is going to go in for the kill. This is something that wouldn’t normally come up in a domestic policy debate, but Romney just cannot resist the opportunity to talk when he thinks he has a gotcha moment.
LanceThruster
I wish my cable picked up alternate universes because this WILL happen somewhere out there.
Link to “10/03/2012
What Obama Should Say, 2012 (Rude Version)”
BGinCHI
David Gregory will still be stupid.
Jim Lehrer will hide his contempt for Romney poorly.
If offered a pledge, Obama will say “go ahead and drop that in the comment box at the WH when you visit.”
Chris
My only concern is that Romney will be so mind-bogglingly stupid that Obama’s abilities will be blanked out with his shock at the sheer mind-boggling stupidity of the mind-bogglingly stupid person he’s arguing with.
(Not planning to watch, but I’ll read the B, J thread with great interest).
Political Observer
SHOCKING NBC NEWS/MARIST POLL OF VIRGINIA AND FLORIDA, STATISTICAL TIE IN BOTH.
The polls are tightening fast and this election is anyone’s game…a real horserace.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus:
2nded.
BGinCHI
@Chris: It’s like playing a terrible tennis player. Brings your game right down.
Recess Appointment
Madeleine Albright is the “ring girl” who announces the transition between Lehrer’s 6 rounds of questions by walking across the stage in a swimsuit holding a placard.
Now every other prediction seems a little less troubling, right?
dr. bloor
We can only hope he’s stupid enough to try this. Obama will then shred his bright white ass for oversimplifying complex issues, and then remind him that only Republicans sign stupid pledges coughNorquistcough.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Roger Moore: That pretty much sums up my view. Thanks.
hep kitty
Romney has one fleeting moment of appearing to be human.
Romney wins!
BGinCHI
@Political Observer: Was this intended for the meta thread?
It’s pitch perfect.
Hill Dweller
@Roger Moore:
This is a given. Politico has already started the ‘Romney comeback’ campaign.
Some of the newer polls are tweaking their weighting to make the margins closer. I don’t know if that is in response to the wingnut criticism about ‘skewed polls’ or an attempt to keep the horse race alive. But they’re going to be used to bolster the Romney comeback narrative.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Political Observer: nice walkback!
hep kitty
I can’t believe the ppl who aren’t watching! I can’t wait! Is it at 9:00 EST?
Steve M.
(1) seems very plausible. (2) seems less so, because saying it would be calling the debate a wash, which would amount to a win for Obama, because he’s leading.
The press needs to have Romney come out the winner. Chuck Todd needs it like a junkie needs a fix. Romney will “win” tonight unless he completely steps on his dick (at least until we get the snap poll results, which very well might give Obama the win).
WJS
Not a concern in the world, actually. Romney will come in somewhat over-prepared and will unleash a zinger that he and his aides have been fired up about for days and it’ll land with a pfft! sound and there will be an awkward silence and then the debate will continue on about nothing.
If Afghanistan is mentioned twice, I’d call that an improvement in our discourse.
KG
@JPL: I’ve been following/studying politics long enough to know when I see a bad politician out of his league. That was Romney 4 years ago, it’s Romney today. He can’t help himself from saying stupid shit
PeakVT
Obama will counter any pledge with a request for Mitt’s taxes. Check.
Villago Delenda Est
Just this.
If there actually were any sort of deity watching over this planet, the “serious people” would have long ago been struck by lightning, and have been done so in a very amusing manner to the observer.
hep kitty
btw, at some point, Romney’s gonna lose his cool, just saying
red dog
I plan to watch any channel without political ads or comments, maybe a ballgame or Nat Geo, or an HBO rerun. My mind, as well as all my friends is made up is made up one way or the other.
Villago Delenda Est
@Political Observer:
Deluded slimemold is deluded.
Film at 11.
BGinCHI
@Steve M.: I’m guessing CNN will have a full panel of holographic virtual commentators and a large screen that Blitzer moves with his mind. John King will have on a space suit and will be dropped over Denver from the ionosphere.
What am I forgetting?
Brachiator
Nancy Pelosi may be trying to supply Obama with a little extra ammo for the debate (snippets from a tax and accounting resource).
And there is this:
Emphasis mine.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that the next Congress and president will have a lot more on their plates than just the Bush tax cuts. Obama (obviously I hope he is re-elected) will have an opportunity to put his mark on tax and economic policy for maybe the next decade. The Republicans will do everything they can to stop him.
One question is whether Obama could shift from being a compromiser-in-chief to instead taking the lead in more actively shaping tax policy.
Meanwhile, Romney and the Village will continue to talk small potatoes stuff about reducing deductions and keeping the Bush tax cuts.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Romney: Mission Obfuscate. The stage will be knee-deep in bullshit by the time he’s done with his opening statement.
Obama: Must not make the “I can’t believe I’m listening to a grown man saying this shit” face. Should probably start off by lunging across the stage and punching Romney in the neck, turning to the camera, and saying “I did that for the good of the nation, are you guys ready for SOME FOOTBALL?”, but won’t.
MoeLarryAndJesus
After the two men shake hands Romney will be seen applying generous amounts of hand sanitizer.
Rhoda
@Omnes Omnibus: Did they use them during the Republican debates? Because if they didn’t; then I doubt they will tonight.
I don’t think it’ll matter, through. They can build up the Romney campaign as much as they want; there’s only so much you can do with a turd. It’s still a turd. And nobody wants to deal with shit. “You didn’t build it,” is a great example of the MSM fluffiing Romney’s lie and it STILL being a net positive for the president.
negative 1
I’m betting that regardless of what he actually says the Village will tell us Romney “finally laid out some specifics” and “really hit the President hard on ________” insert one of the following: the economy, the deficit, and/or jobs.
Also, they will say Obama “didn’t look like the cool orator that he has been in past debates” and he “was a bit (pick one: flat or aloof)”.
Then they will say “it’s anyone’s game!” just like the bot a few comments above me.
KG
@Political Observer: that’s not shocking. that’s right in line with most of the recent polls out of those states. It’s not “tightening” if it’s staying more or less the same as it has been for the last two months.
In other words: you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
LD50
But.
Obama is smarter than Romney. If you thought of this trick, Axelrod et al certainly did, too, and they have a response prepared. If Romney tries it, Obama will deflect it, and the only people who will think it was a triumph for Romney will be the people already voting for him.
Ash Can
My premonition: We BJers will come away from the debate smarting over an instance or two (or three) where Obama really could have harpooned Romney but let the opportunity pass because he was being too polite or trying to put too fine a point on something.
@BGinCHI: PO gave himself away in that meta thread with a comment that was, in fact, pitch-perfect.
Sloegin
Romney will say zingers!
Zingers will be forced, awkward, and fairly dumb.
Zingers will be prominently featured 24/7 by all news channels and MSM will declare them the new “where’s the beef!”.
Must keep bourbon within reach, gun out of reach…
ericblair
@BGinCHI:
It’s a different skill to play against them, really. Instead of dealing with somebody who’s going to do the smart thing or get in a deliberate deception that’s standard practice but skillfully done, you’re dealing with a random idiot who will do stupid unexpected things with no care for or understanding of the risks.
It’s pretty sad that the Democratic debate preparation probably consists of figuring out how to punch down to ideological idiots without looking like they’re clubbing baby seals. Not to mention dealing with the alternate-reality media spin.
Chyron HR
@Political Observer:
2008 was the first time in 40 years that a Democrat won Virignia. Does the fact that all of a sudden it’s a SWING STATE that you’re desperately trying to hold onto tell you anything about what a failure Mitt Romney is?
schrodinger's cat
Romney will cry like a little boy, after Obama cleans his clock.
ed_finnerty
I can’t tell this thread apart from the snark thread
artem1s
@hep kitty:
Romney
has one fleeting moment of appearing to be humanmanages to NOT set his podium on fire.]RMoney Win!
ShadeTail
What “pledge” do you think Romney might be pushing? And somewhat more importantly, how do you imagine that little pissant could make the President do anything?
Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. Obama has long shown that he’s a master of not taking those obnoxious sophists too seriously.
PeakVT
@Ash Can: Comment pointing out you got punked.
The Dangerman
I’m guessing Romney doesn’t go for any kind of Hail Mary and plays it very much vanilla so he can lose with some grace and dignity. He’s dogfood (the cheap shit that comes from China, laden with lead) and he knows it.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
‘cept in the meta thread “cherry picked” poll was used instead of the correct “totally made up” poll. That’s how we knew it wasn’t a troll being meta.
Kay
If you have a chance, watch Romney with the sound off. People are responding (negatively) to more than his voice and his words. He has a weird pleading “like me, please!” quality that comes through in his physical presence. It comes off as weak, to me.
Aet
The experience will remind people of a needlessly confrontational high-school freshman, trying to have a discussion with a dry but friendly professor, while the rest of the class watches in half-amused para-silence.
scav
There will be a power outage somewhere at a critical moment and we’ll have to raise money for heat-attack care for several felled BJers.
aimai
@Steve M.:
I’ve already got a concern troll email from “Rootstrikers” which is a legit leftist organization complaining that neither Mitt nor Obama will discuss “corruption” in the form of the major amounts of money in the political system. I put my faith in Obama being faulted by all rightthinking observers for failing to mention something, anything, incredibly meaningless or beside the point or so utterly narrowly the purview of a tiny subsection of the population that no one has ever heard of it. A lot of pundits, when they run out of punditing or obvious gaffes or issues like to preen themselves in public by pretending that their very obscure issue is really important and tha tthe candidates are cowards for not giving this teeny constituency a tongue bath.
aiai
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Just the FICA withholding “holiday” ending will make a difference–as always, disproportionatly affecting the working poor and lower middle class.
SatanicPanic
@ed_finnerty: Yeah, everyone seems pretty stuck on meta-mode.
ETA- and it occurs to me that I am too
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Sloegin: Romney only has one zinger, which will be the answer to every question:
“Tax cuts!”
beltane
They say that Romney has been practicing very hard how to appear likable and empathetic. No word on whether or not this involved an upgrade to his emotion generating chip.
trollhattan
@aimai:
Do they not remember his calling out SCOTUS in his first congressional address, with them in the room?
Sheesh.
Marked Hoosier
Take a drink for every Romney “zinger,” and ten drinks when he gets in the line “there you go again.”
different-church-lady
Is this some kind of repeat of Sooner’s “generic post” from earlier?
Poopyman
@BGinCHI:
Now that would be a GREAT opening to the debate!
Say, I hope you’re not implying that he’d be wearing a parachute, ’cause that would ruin everything.
Violet
Romney’s going to try that chuckle he seems to think makes him empathetic. It’s going to fail as spectacularly as it has in its previous appearances.
scav
Oh, wait, with all the cries for Romney appearing as a real boy, a CGI Blue Fairy will appear on our screens and said serial Pinocchio will visibly alter. Village Jimminy Crickets will chirp in adoration at the manger and the White Horse will lay down with Rafalca.
trollhattan
@Marked Hoosier:
Don’t you try killing me like that. [hic]
How will I recognize a Romney zinger? Will he give off a puff of smoke? A blue LED lights in his nose?
The man’s so wooden, Weyerhauser wants to clone and farm him.
Cris (without an H)
Clubba FTW
pillsy
I think the Obama team is trying to get Romney pissed off and is luring him into denouncing the President’s “class warfare” and “divisiveness”. They must have something devastating lined up if Romney does do that; why else does the subtext abruptly turn into text in the last seconds of the new Obama ad?
scav
@different-church-lady: I think there’s a little bleed through. We’ve all gone giddy, probably a little like hopped kids on Christmas eve.
Cermet
@KG: A planted turd from a romney faction. Ignore brain dead turds and only feed useful trolls
ShadeTail
@trollhattan:
Lots of alleged non-republicans have forgotten a great deal about what the President has done over the past four years.
Whenever they whine about how the President “sold us out” at the end of 2010 by agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts, I like to pop in and remind them that Obama pushed the democratic Congress to end those tax cuts, but the cowards stabbed him in the back by refusing to hold a vote prior to the election.
I also like to point out that, despite the Congress betraying him like that, Obama was still able to use the tax cuts as a bargaining chip to get a 99 week extension on unemployment benefits.
These idiots have forgotten that the President has co-equal branches of government to deal with, and that Congress in particular often refuses to cooperate.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Kay: That’s not what I get. I get the full-on “used car salesman” vibe. He looks like he’s lying, and the sad thing is that he looks that way even when he’s telling the truth too.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Beg to differ. The working poor and lower middle class get the benefit of a negative income tax in the form of refundable tax credits such as the Earned Income Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit.
If these credits are greatly reduced or eliminated, there will be a big, huge, fucking gigantic hole in the economic safety net that sustains millions of people.
The FICA holiday, for the lower tier of the working poor doesn’t compare. The lowest income groups got a bigger break from the old temporary Making Work Pay Credit than they do from the FICA holiday.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
ericblair
@Rhoda:
I’m pretty sure that’s the Zinger of Death for tonight. “Something something latest Fox Nooz outrage of the day. Did you build THAT, Mr. President?” Then totally blows it by smiling like a two-year-old who laid a nice big log in the potty all by himself.
amk
mittbot: Would you sign a pledge….
Obama: Excuse me, Governor, I sign pledges to uphold the constitution of UNITED STATES, not to appease people like norquist.
Violet
@Kay:
This is absolutely true. There’s something very “beaten puppy”-ish about him. I think he doesn’t get the concept of appealing to the voters outside of begging. Having acceptable policies and treating them with respect are outside his field of understanding.
Pleading is also not a key trait people want in their commander in chief. It turns people off.
Additionally, I think Romney’s had work done on his face and his eyes and mouth now don’t match up. He looks weird. People can’t necessarily figure out why, but he looks odd and it adds to his general air of untrustworthiness.
LD50
@Political Observer: Yawn.
Call me when you’ve worked up some new shtick:
http://electoral-vote.com/
BarbCat
Romney will try to appear prosecutorial, rolling out a well-practiced laundry-list critique of Obama, but ‘in answer’ to a question not asked.
schrodinger's cat
Romney will sing America the beautiful and then say, now I will show you the dance of my people and break out into an interpretative dance. MSM flunkies, will swoon, how bold, how courageous. Rest of us, ROTFLOL.
Cris (without an H)
Okay, you overplayed your hand with that one. Verdict: not a troll, but a spoof.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
someone has probably said this, but…
Remember when John McCain called on Obama to suspend his campaign, and Obama said, “Pfffft”. Remember when Cory LieberBooker, Harold Ford, Ed Rendell and teh SEcretary of ‘Splainin’ Stuff called on Obama to stop picking on Bain Capital and Obama said, “Pfffft.” I’m a worrywart concern troll, but this doesn’t worry me in the slightest.
KG
@Cermet: I know, but my years of lawyering training requires me to respond to even stupid arguments, less they gain some traction. Even if it is just a passing mocking – and yes, I have mocked opposing counsel in motions/oppositions (sometimes it’s all you’ve got).
mb
My prediction: Romney quotes poem, “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer in his closing remarks. Perhaps as his closing remarks.
Maude
Obama doesn’t need to sign some kind of dumb pledge. He took the oath of office (twice) and that is enough. Romney would look like a fool.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BGinCHI:
Ya think? I haven’t seen Lehrer in a while. Maybe this will be interesting after all. I have to admit I can’t quite figure out how anyone not named “Romney” doesn’t have contempt for Romney. I wonder if Romney’s own siblings aren’t calling each other and chuckling about “Too bad Dad isn’t here to see his precious White Horse stumble in the home stretch”
LD50
@Cris (without an H): It’s hard to say. You’d think a halfway decent spoof would be a lot funnier.
Brachiator
@ShadeTail:
Obama should have killed the tax cuts, even if he could not get the unemployment benefits extension. It would have undercut the Republicans and possibly prevented them from their later nonsense over the debt ceiling.
It also would have brought in more revenue immediately.
I think that Obama could have made the GOP blink over unemployment compensation and even put more GOP governors on the hot seat.
I don’t think the trees in that poem were the right height.
amk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: egg.sack.lee.
Beatrice
@Forum Transmitted Disease: How do you know what he looks like when he is telling the truth?
feebog
It seems to me that he just comes off stiff and wooden. Saw a picture of rMoney walking with staffers; they all had bent knees and a slight lean forward, rMoney was stifflegged and straight up. Also, saw a clip of Romney walking to a podium yesterday; he seemed to be taking mincing steps, very weird. The guy just has very strange mannerisms and speech patterns, which all foster the robot meme. Compare that to Obama, who has the ability to appear relaxed and in control, with a thousand facts at his fingertips.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
It’s probably a good thing that the debate-watching party I’m probably going to tonight is in a dry household. (Turns out that when two recovering alcoholics marry, it’s a faux pas to show up with a 12-pack of beer. Who knew?)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet: I’m surprised nobody seems to talk about how much he blinks. I don’t know how much truth there is to that kind of pop-body language psychology, but he sure as hell looks nervous and insecure. I have a lot of respect for Al Gore and John Kerry, I like(d) them both as pols, but they gave off the same kind of “how do I look and sound right now?” vibe. Which vibe was totally missing from the worst parts of the 47% video
ThresherK
@dr. bloor: Romney, who has gone thru his entire adult life with a Mr. Burns-like phalanx of lawyers standing behind a hidden panel, thinks his opponent will sign something without reading it first.
I can only hope the pledge is offered. I mean, ask Senator Rick Lazion about how a GOP ambush pledge plays during a debate.
gene108
I want the first question to Mitt to be, “46% of Republicans believe President Obama was born in Kenya, do you share this belief?”
Second question, “Do you believe President Obama spent for years learning radical Islam at a madrasa in Indonesia as a youth?”
In short, force Mitt to own all the crazy-ass “conventional wisdom” right-wingers have regarding President Obama.
The Other Chuck
@beltane:
My guess then is he takes that pouty-lipped blinky-eyed thing he did at the RNC and dials it up to 11. I swear to god, that expression was so unctuous and smarmy, it’s the sort of expression that _normal_ people put on when they’re trying to make it obvious they’re _mocking_ the appearance of sincerity.
BGinCHI
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I always thought Lehrer was the kind who didn’t suffer fools too well.
I hope he asks pointed questions and follows up. Low bar, really.
gene108
@Brachiator:
Most people don’t have a lot of extra income these days. What they have gotten from the Bush tax cuts is sopped up by higher food and fuel prices.
Forcing someone, who has limited discretionary income to pay more in taxes will have a material impact on the economy for the worse.
The millionaires on the other hand have more money than they can spend in one lifetime and can absorb higher taxes.
That is why the Bush tax cuts expiring right now are such a big deal, because the aggregate impact of hundreds of millions of Americans no longer having a few hundred to few thousand dollars of “walking around money” will be felt as demand drops even further.
Redshift
Do it, Mitt! That worked great for Rick Lazio!
(DougJ, I think your Dead Zone is trolling you…)
Tractarian
@Ash Can:
The comment in the meta thread was by “Political Observator”, not our dear beloved “Political Observer”. But….
@Cris (without an H):
Yeah, “shocking” and “real horserace” pretty much said to me “I am DougJ, King of the Spoofers”
burnspbesq
Romney hung a curveball in the form of his $17,000 bucket proposal. I expect Obama to hit it completely out of the stadium and break some poor shlub’s windshield in the parking lot.
amk
@pillsy: That’s a real ‘zinger’ ad.
lol
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Private company doesn’t want its private property to be used to manufacture weapons. I’m missing the part where I’m supposed to be worried.
Davis X. Machina
We covered the fallacies of distraction in debate class today. I can’t think of a better time to do it, especially style over substance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq: I can’t believe that shit isn’t getting more play. I would think that would set off the alarm bells of pretty much every person with a mortgage, to say nothing of poor bastards like me who pay out of pocket for health insurance that doesn’t cover dental, to say still nothing about the non profits.
Kay
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
But that’s part of it. He isn’t giving anything, but he wants something. I could describe it as “trying too hard”, where his audience feels almost burdened.
Southern Beale
I predict tomorrow morning there will be much whining from wingnuts about the “softballs” Obama got vs the “gotcha questions” Romney bravely tackled. Because of the liberal media being “in the tank” and all that.
Ash Can
@PeakVT:
@Tractarian:
LOL! You guys are right. I didn’t even notice. Doesn’t take away from the fact I think PO is too over-the-top at times to be for real, though.
Rick Taylor
I predict a train wreck for Romney. He didn’t have a serious challenger in the primaries, and he’s about to go up against someone who knows what they’re doing.
P.S. Happy to be proven right. . .
Gravenstone
@Ash Can: That was a PO clone, Observator.
Caught me out at first, too.
Calouste
@Political Observer:
Let me help you a bit, because you seem to have missed out one poll:
Ohio – Obama +8
And you probably didn’t know it, but no Republican has ever won without Ohio, and Romney is not going to be the first.
Kay
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
He does this thing at rallies where he lets applause just sort of wash over him. You know how Obama and Bill Clinton shush the audience because they have something to say? Clinton did it at the DNC, repeatedly. It’s mildly impatient? I’m sure Bill Clinton and Obama love applause, but that isn’t why they’re up there.
Romney doesn’t do that.
FlipYrWhig
On the matter of Romney’s affect and mannerisms, every time I see the ad where he talks directly to the camera — the one where he says both he and Obama care about people but the difference is that his policies will actually help — I get really tangibly uncomfortable, almost itchy. That guy talking at me that long… I hit my limit pretty early, but then it just. won’t. stop.
J.D. Rhoades
@pillsy:
“Not One of Us”? Oh, SNAP. That was fucking brilliant. They’ve been playing the “not one of us” card for years now, and it is a pleasure to see it shot right back at ’em.
Gravenstone
@amk:
I’m picturing that in the WOPR voice, “would you like to play a game?”
mb
One other prediction:
Most effective Romney zinger will be “Where’s the beef?” Which serves to lock up the critical Mondale-Republican vote.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: Glengarry/Glen Ross 2012!
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It won’t take long for TPC to jump on this.
I just took a quick look at our 2011 return. We had $48K in itemized deductions: state income tax, mortgage interest, and charitable contributions (the cost of our health insurance for the part of the year that we were both self-employed went on Schedule C). A $31K haircut on itemized deductions would have cost us at least $10K in additional tax (depending on what it did to our AMT position).
We could have afforded that if we had had to; we had AGI of around $360K. The people who really get fucked by Romney’s $17,000 bucket are going to be people with AGI of $80-150K (in other words, nearly every middle-class two-income household), especially people who haven’t been able to reduce the interest rate on their mortgages by refinancing because their equity has evaporated.
And I have no doubt that Romney fully understands who his proposal will fuck.
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus: That is my prediction also.
Tractarian
Here’s a serious prediction (that probably many people are privately thinking, but no one seems to want to make explicitly, perhaps due to the expectations game):
Obama will annihilate Mitt tonight.
The questions will be policy-oriented, but tilted heavily toward Village obsessions like forcing the middle class to sacrifice and deficit reduction now now now. That is probably the best case scenario for Romney. But it doesn’t matter. Mitt’s problem is that he has become a hard-core right-winger during the course of the campaign. So any answer he gives will either (1) offend low-information swing voters, (2) enrage his base, or (3) sound so wishy-washy and mealy-mouthed as to be laughable.
The instant pundit reaction will be that Mitt won, because that’s the story they’re setting up. But once the instant voter reaction becomes clear, the media’s tune will change. This is exactly the same dynamic that played out in 2008. McCain won the media because he said the things the media expected him to say. But voters just weren’t buying it.
Frankly, this is where being the reality-based party really pays off. There is simply no way for Mitt – or any other GOP nominee – to appear reasonable when he’s advocating slashing tax rates for millionaires and slashing services for non-millionaires, and when there is a candidate at the other podium that exudes moderation.
J.D. Rhoades
@Calouste:
I heard a commentator on NPR today warning that Obama’s lead was “only in single digits” in Ohio. I LOL’d.
Davis X. Machina
@burnspbesq:
In the banking industry, these people are known as ‘me’.
catclub
@gene108: “The millionaires on the other hand have more money than they can spend in one lifetime and can absorb higher taxes.”
I am reminded of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in which they decide that Bill Cosby earning $20M a year is an absurd amount of money. Then Hobbes says that $15M is reasonable, to him.
In other words, I suspect that with some effort, they could spend it all – like facing the prospect of a nasty divorce in which remaining property will be divided.
amk
brian kilmeade punks his own pox news & klannity.
catclub
@Tractarian: I would like to ask Mitt if a company that can borrow funds at zero interest with no security, should do that to rebuild their infrastructure.
if we are running the US like a CEO should.
Followups would know his history of using Bain Cap to borrow money.
burnspbesq
@Davis X. Machina:
Better buy a tent, because Romney wants you to lose that house.
Or, you could do your part to make sure that that fuck never gets into the White House without an invitation.
Not sure there is a third option.
Kilgore Trout
@Political Observer:
The last Florida poll by Gravis two weeks ago had Romney ahead by one, so this one actually shows Obama improving.
Troll Fail.
Brachiator
@gene108:
RE: It also would have brought in more revenue immediately.
I was talking more here about the upper income groups. I just finished talking to a CPA whose client sold a business for $100,000. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts and other stuff in the return, the net tax here is ZERO.
Keeping the Bush tax cuts, along with some other provisions, was politically expedient, but bad tax policy.
Maude
@burnspbesq:
I still think Romney took the amnesty 2009.
He’s never get that tax top of 17,000 through Congress. Of course he isn’t going to get a chance to try.
SiubhanDuinne
@hep kitty:
9:00 p.m. EDT. We’re still on Daylight Saving Time.
/time pedant
ThresherK
@Kay: Wait, Romney made the choice to let applause wash over him? I musta missed that time he needed to tell the admiring throngs to cool it.
He’s like the band who comes out for a second encore when nobody was stomping their feet for the first.
Jewish Steel
Can you imagine any lawyer falling for that? Treating contracts circumspectly is 80% of what they do.
Patricia Kayden
My premonition? That by tomorrow morning, the media will declare Romneybot 2.0 as the winner of all three debates. They want a horse race and are not going to let polls get in their way, gosh darn it!
JustAnotherBob
@Ash Can:
I suspect PBO totally intends to win. But has no desire to destroy.
Part of his agenda is to attempt to heal the country. Grinding Romney to bits in the debates would work against that goal.
Cassidy
My premonition? You can’t polish a turd, but the Halperin’s Crowleys, and Todd’s will work that mother like a catholic priest in a confessional. Romeny “wins” this debate no matter what and tomorrow we will all be pissed because the story and the facts will be two differnt things. everyone excpet me, that is. I have school tonight.
Joshua
Romney’s “zinger” will literally just be the “there you go again” line. The usual folks will consider it a simple-yet-powerful indictment of something or other, the rest of us will wonder what Romney was thinking pulling such a pathetic stunt, and the three sane people on the planet won’t be paying attention to either the debate or the post-debate summaries and discussions.
James E. Powell
I always have a bad feeling before a big moment. It gives me the demonic energy to review the things that can go wrong so that I can prepare in advance for what I will do if they happen. On this debate thing, though, I have no control over it, so all I have is anxiety.
If things go the way I’d like them to, Romney reveals he is still a dick, Obama shows he is a decent person who is fit for the office of the presidency. Obama goes on to be elected, Dems hold the senate, but don’t take the house. My life goes on as before.
That’s the best I can hope for.
roc
A spin-off of premonition (2), I’m guessing that — absent any great political gifts like the 47% quip — the media dismisses the debates entirely as “something that doesn’t matter when Walmart Waitress moms have to work a second shift to keep up with rising prices” or some other obtuse concern that blindly assumes a Republican talking point as reality.
‘to keep up with rising prices’ -> Republican inflation fears
‘because the factory doesn’t know if it can re-open its shuttered line and hire back her husband’ -> confidence fairy!
etc.
James E. Powell
@JustAnotherBob:
I suspect PBO totally intends to win. But has no desire to destroy.
I agree. And if he stomps on Romney too hard, Obama will get major backlash from the corporate press/media. They will consider it their duty to the country to bring him down.
Carol from CO
Romney will lie through his teeth and Obama will talk compromise and debt reduction.
blingee
Yea, I make a prediction that whatever DougJ predicted will be DEAD WRONG….as usual.
JustAnotherBob
@James E. Powell:
I suspect PBO totally intends to win. But has no desire to destroy.
I want to change that a bit. PBO is a competitive guy and I suspect would love to leave Romney a burning husk on the debate room floor, but he’ll fight back that urge.
roc
Oh, and I don’t think there will be any Romney Zingers.
Leaking that notion to the press was a bush-league attempt to get Obama to prep some barbs of his own, so Mitt could lay out some bait and then climb up on a cross *and* play the “Angry Black Man” thing if Obama took it.
Not coincidentally, that’s the exact move Brown was going for when he tried to bait Warren with that “I’m not in your classroom” line.
It subtly reminds his supporters of what they don’t like about Brown *and* baits her for a snappy response that could be concern-trolled to hell and back.
ShadeTail
@Brachiator:
The President *could* have let the tax cuts just die, sure, and in many ways, it would have been a good idea. At the same time, he clearly had the entirely understandable opinion that screwing people who were out of work was an unacceptable trade-off. And if you seriously think that the GOP, whether in Congress or elsewhere, would have blinked on relief for the unemployed, then you really haven’t been paying attention to their antics over the past decade.
That whole nasty business could have been a moot point if those fucking cowards in the Democratic Congressional Caucus had done their goddamn jobs. But they betrayed us and Obama by punting on the tax issue prior to the election, and we all ended up paying for it. Yet, people who are, at least allegedly, liberals like me ignore the part Congressional Dems played in that disaster, and heap all the blame on the President. That’s just ridiculously unfair.
Kane
It will undoubtedly be reported that Romney did very well during debate. Then on Thursday or Friday, rather than build on his success, Romney will offer a major gaffe or make an incredible blunder that will negate what he accomplished. We have seen this movie so many times throughout the campaign.
Bill Arnold
Feeling devoid of dead zone style premonitions. It’s likely that both teams were still in active prep all day today, and that the Obama team has been, as usual, competently gaming out the debate point (and zinger) scenarios.
Hoping Obama got a good night’s sleep last night.
The media reaction is likely to be tilted toward trying to make it a competitive horse race again, because that’s their job – shareholder value.
bcinaz
Premonition 1. No way in the world Romney lives up to the extreme necessity of up-ending the race.
Premonition 2. Everybody is underselling Obama’s competitiveness.