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Via Paul Constant at the Stranger. I want to caption it “Bugs Bunny endorses the Roadrunner over Wile E. Coyote“, but maybe that’s just me.
What’s on the agenda for this midweek evening?
Anne Laurie has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2009.
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
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Via Paul Constant at the Stranger. I want to caption it “Bugs Bunny endorses the Roadrunner over Wile E. Coyote“, but maybe that’s just me.
What’s on the agenda for this midweek evening?
This post is in: Election 2012, The War On Women, Assholes, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
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At least until his campaign poll-watchers decide renouncing Mourdock is the next best step in the ongoing daily “Principles? What Principles?” parade. Per Indiana expert & resident Doghouse Riley:
… Richard Mourdock is a lunatic. If he’s not completely unhinged it’s only because he didn’t come with hinges in the first place. This is not even open to debate. The only question which is open is how he (that is, the vast ocean of non-Hoosier lunatic money he compiled) got Indiana Republicans to join in in the primary, and what this says about the folly of democratic elections.
The three candidates (Mourdock, the Republican-Democrat, and the Libertarian) are asked about abortion, because of course they are. (No one is ever asked to describe the landscape of the surrounding fantasy world where a Senator’s opinion about abortion means squat, to the law, to the ethical questions involved, or to the sorts of political gyrations and elimination of half the country’s population which would be required to change the status quo.) All are agin’ it, because of course they are, including the Libertarian…. And Mourdock says that, even in the case of rape, pregnancy is still a gift from God. Because of course he did. Seriously. Of course he did. This is actually how these maniacs refined Todd Akin’s message over the past two months.
Mourdock was forced to come out afterwards to assure the voting public that he thinks rape is bad. This is the sort of non-apology apology which used to be considered de rigueur, and simply rote, but which recent events have turned into a needed clarification.
Now, if you’re like me, you watch Indiana politics, if at all, as a sort of spring training for dealing with your crazy relatives at Thanksgiving. If you want the political side of this, other than the increasingly moldy news that everyone in the Republican party is clinically insane, it’s that Mourdock is the one Republican Senatorial candidate Willard Mitt Romney has seen fit to make a campaign commercial for, which he did a couple weeks ago. But, then, you already knew about Romney’s decision-making skills, didn’t you? One-third of the Senate is up for reelection, and Romney chooses to help a guy who not only was dancing around in a tinfoil fool’s cap all season, but one you’d take one look at and remove your children from the playground he was sitting near. Not to mention that the Teabagging Mourdock campaign has become desperate enough to play ball with Mitt Fucking Romney….
Somebody needs to tell the downstream GOP candidates that The Handmaid’s Tale was never intended to serve as a technical manual.
Romney Stands by “God-Intended Rape” CandidatePost + Comments (75)
This post is in: Election 2012, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republican Venality
(Keith Knight via GoComics.com)
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Jonathan Chait at NYMag points out that, when Romney’s people say he’s winning, “It’s A Bluff“:
In recent days, the vibe emanating from Mitt Romney’s campaign has grown downright giddy. Despite a lack of any evident positive momentum over the last week — indeed, in the face of a slight decline from its post-Denver high — the Romney camp is suddenly bursting with talk that it will not only win but win handily. (“We’re going to win,” said one of the former Massachusetts governor’s closest advisers. “Seriously, 305 electoral votes.”)
This is a bluff. Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy…
Karl Rove employed exactly this strategy in 2000. As we now know, the race was excruciatingly close, and Al Gore won the national vote by half a percentage point. But at the time, Bush projected a jaunty air of confidence. Rove publicly predicted Bush would win 320 electoral votes. Bush even spent the final days stumping in California, supposedly because he was so sure of victory he wanted an icing-on-the-cake win in a deep blue state. Campaign reporters generally fell for Bush’s spin, portraying him as riding the winds of momentum and likewise presenting Al Gore as desperate.
The current landscape is slightly different. The race is also very close, but Obama enjoys a clear electoral college lead. He is ahead by at least a couple points in enough states to make him president. Adding to his base of uncontested states, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin would give Obama 271 electoral votes. According to the current polling averages compiled at fivethirtyeight.com, Obama leads Nevada by 3.5 percent, Ohio by 2.9 percent, and Wisconsin by 4 percent. Should any of those fail, Virginia and Colorado are nearly dead even. (Obama leads by 0.7 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively.) If you don’t want to rely on Nate Silver — and you should rely on him! — the polling averages at realclearpolitics, the conservative-leaning site, don’t differ much, either…
Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.
Many more details at the link, which you should go read. Chait’s seconded by Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly:
… As a deep skeptic about the importance of “momentum” in sports or in politics, I keep looking for evidence that the belief a candidate is ahead will add to his or her vote. Yes, obviously, a small but significant number of voters may need to think their candidate has a realistic chance to win in order to find the motivation to vote. But do any pick a president based on who they perceive as being ahead in a close race? Nobody but Dick Morris has been predicting a Romney landslide. But nonetheless, a remarkable number of conservative gabbers and a growing number of liberals seem to think media horse-race perceptions are the ball game.
Maybe that’s so, but I wouldn’t be so sure about it. You can make the argument that an achingly close race in which Obama desperately needs a fantastic GOTV effort might be a “self-fulfillling prophecy” as well, which adds to the zeal and effectiveness of that effort. Yes, conservative “enthusiasm” has always depended on the perception that Mitt wasn’t a stone loser; one he crossed that threshold (one set by the polls rather than any perceived “moderation” or “Etch-a-Sketch Moment”), there was no doubt the GOP “base” would turn out impressively, given the hate frenzy they’ve been in towards Obama for four years now. Beyond that, though, it’s not clear all the spin matters—no matter how deeply annoying and dishonest it is for the MSM to buy it.
Karl Rove and the rest of the GOP’s unindicted co-conspirators are busy spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Don’t let them trick your facebook friends and low-information relatives. Save the scary stories for the Halloween parties, be like Keith Knight, and treat the GOP’s ever-shifting UNLIMITED CORPORATE VICTORY with the contempt it so richly deserves.
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Don’t Trip Over the SpinPost + Comments (102)
This post is in: Election 2012, Music, Open Threads, Women's Rights Are Human Rights
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For the amusement of my fellow Boomers, particularly Generation Jones. Suzy Parker reports for WaPo:
In 1964, Lesley Gore belted out “You Don’t Own Me” and a feminist song was born. It’s still resonating in the 21st century as debate over women’s issues bubbles in the United States before Nov. 6…
The video, labeled as “YouDon’tOwnMePSA,” is the mastermind of Sarah Sophie Flicker, a law school graduate, filmmaker, trapeze artist, mother and leader of New York’s The Citizens Band, a cabaret collective that makes political statements.
She writes in an e-mail to PAPER magazine about the video: “Personally, I’m struck by the fact that we are teetering dangerously close to a situation where my daughter won’t have the same rights I’ve enjoyed my entire life and that scares the heck out of me. Women constituted 60% of last elections voters. We can win this thing. We just have to agitate, motivate, and get out the darn vote!”
She asked several friends including Carrie Brownstein, a guitarist and vocalist in Wild Flag and star of “Portlandia,” teen fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson, creator of the website “Rookie,” who recently asked for an interview with President Obama, and Miranda July, a popular performance artist….
I do remember the original being considered rather daring, by our sophisticated third-grade standards.
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Apart from combatting the Regressive Party, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Blast from the Past…Post + Comments (108)
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
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Stolen from Horses and Bayonets Tumblr.
Sometimes I love the internets.
Late Night Open Thread: Bayonets & Horses!Post + Comments (116)
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
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It’s already a meme…
Post-Debate Open Thread: Horses & BayonetsPost + Comments (142)
This post is in: Election 2012, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republican Venality
First, Doghouse Riley in the Midwest:
THE Freedom Defenders at Clear Channel have announced that dozens of the [VOTER FRAUD IS A FELONY!] billboards will be removed immediately, since the Freedom Defenders at Whatever Anonymous Family Foundation Which Was Accidentally Permitted To Fund Them Contrary To Clear Channel’s Own Rules has–wisely, we think–decided it would rather remain anonymous than further its voter education efforts in the open.
The billboards have been erected in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Columbus, Ohio, and elsewhere, in what the headline writers described as “predominantly poor neighborhoods”, which is the faux-balanced way of pretending the targeting might not have been racist.
And, since our own No Preteritio policy is enforced by the same legal team that vets Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings’ contracts, we’re not going to mention that the odds of Clear Channel accidentally contracting to put up anonymous political billboards targeted at You Know Who are identical to the odds of Clear Channel accidentally revealing the name of the foundation in question. It’s just math. Contracts are hard. I’m sure they don’t understand what they’re signing half the time…
Next, Rebecca Schoenkopf at Wonkette reports that “This Is Not The Voter Fraud Virginia Republicans Are Looking For“:
Guys, guys, calm down now. You may have thought you finally found some voter fraud after all these years of searching far and wide and under every ACORN, but it is pretty clear to the Virginia attorney general, registrar and Board of Elections that you didn’t. To them, it is quite obvious that a guy working for the RNC conducting voter registrations, who was caught blocks from their office shadily throwing completed voter registration forms in someone else’s Dumpster, simply cannot be guilty of voter registration fraud, despite working for the company widely known to commit voter registration fraud for the RNC. How do they know this? Because nowhere on Virginia’s voter registration applications does it list party affiliation! Therefore, dude would have no way of knowing the forms he was throwing away belonged to Democrats. And there are so many other reasons he might have thrown away people’s applications! Investigation closed! Wait, really, the investigation’s closed? Sho nuff.
“There’s no way to tell by party when people fill out these forms, what party they’re affiliated with, so I don’t think there’s any political motivation,” Virginia Registrar Brandi Lilly said Friday.
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And this is why GOTV is key: We don’t just need to win, we need to stockpile enough votes to overcome the Rethugs’ broad-based, well-funded “margin of suppression”.