the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

gonna have some long talks w/ my rabbi, family members, message board people

I live in California so zzz

def Nieuwenhuis for National League centerfielder

Dianne Feinstein's running again for Senate, will win, zzz.

ugh wish Feinstein's career was over already

congratulation to willard mitt romney!!

writing in Yosemite Sam as I do every 4 years

well he does have a decent chance of winning your state

Tea Party hates rabbits and evolution.

btw I think the number of ppl susceptible to "the most important election of your lifetime" has decreased a tad this cycle, haven't seen it anywhere. Maybe just reserved for use by cable idiots now.

Duck season!

surprised at aero's vote. why legitimize Yosemite Sam's continuing reign of terror?

so should I try to retain my VA registration until November despite probably living the whole year in MA so my vote will matter more for the presidency or should I register in MA so I can vote for Elizabeth Warren?

ma, virginia prob won't turn the election

Trying to think of how this scenario compares to '08. Romney seems more hardened in his beliefs than McCain. Not sure how that plays out.

I'm not sure how/if/when beliefs enter into any of this

lol, isn't the n*rr*tive for Mittens that he has no beliefs? as it would be for Bam if his followers were sentient.

If he's actually properly got the nomination now, I wouldn't be surprised to see him down in Zuccotti Park the evening talking to the plain folks.

there is pretty good evidence for the statement 'romney has no real beliefs' outside of possibly mormonism

Well, maybe I could say instead that he presents a more hardened stance in his rhetoric.

btw I think the number of ppl susceptible to "the most important election of your lifetime" has decreased a tad this cycle, haven't seen it anywhere.

Its importance has increased to "most important election since 1860."

Each candidate believes in his own will to power as the will of the universe.

let me guess, Dan: Maddow?

santorum, actually

Romney has a pretty constant core belief, but it's not the kind that will endear you to voters because it's so narrow.

is it the "I should be president" thing?

not really, but that's an offshoot of his "free market i am a business man and basically a little god" mentality.

Also the victimization issue that people were talking about on the other thread. McCain didn't embody this as much. This campaign seems like it will be more paranoid.

romney def believes in the power of business consulting but he's actually kinda bad at being cocky

awesome, i can be first to say

Good Luck, USA

"I am the only person who sees clearly that America's hair is on fire! That is why I feel such urgency to be your president."

"we're sorry senator, you're not allowed to abort your candidacy -- you'll need to carry it to full term"

(xpost) Gingrich may have started the 1860 phrase and Santorum picked up on it, I dunno.

And so now we have Newt Gingrich insisting that 2012 "is the most important election since 1860." And some in the punditocracy go even further; according to columnist E. J. Dionne, "Everyone agrees that the 2012 election will be a turning point involving one of the most momentous choices in American history."

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&id=33338:the-greatest-post-in-all-our-lifetimes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-27-point-gender-gap-that-could-decide-the-election/2012/04/10/gIQAlm5E8S_blog.html?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

A wide gender gap underlies the current state of the race. Romney is up eight percentage points among male voters but trails by 19 among women.

2008 gap wuz 13 points

This year has made it pretty clear that the republican party views women as second class citizens, I'm surprised it is not more than 19 points.

the Democratic Party only views non-millionaire women as second-class citizens

Ashley Judd 4 Prez imo

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/cain-women-gender-gap-romney-obama.html

men vs. other people

Well, hell _is_ other people, ya know, as the many other people in Cain's life have no doubt proven to him thru litigation of harmless actions and jokes

Romney behind the scenes at Fox

btw I think the number of ppl susceptible to "the most important election of your lifetime" has decreased a tad this cycle, haven't seen it anywhere. Maybe just reserved for use by cable idiots now.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:44 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a putative historian on the internet-talk-show annex of NRO, the hoover institution presents uncommon knowledge with peter robinson, pulled this one a few months ago, cuz this election is america's great choice between Administration & Liberty. i am leaning liberty but idk what if i got sick.

i dunno, the election of 1864 was p. important too

http://i42.tinypic.com/2h890kn.jpg

campaign's not over until someone cries holding a doll iirc

doll is in the hospital iirc

what's going on over there on the right

Five Republicans have filed the necessary papers and $500 fee to qualify for the June 26 Utah presidential primary election, but with Rick Santorum dropping out of the race Tuesday, only four will be on the ballot.

Or possibly three.

Newt Gingrich’s check bounced.

Bah, here's the URL: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/53886982-90/utah-romney-gingrich-campaign.html.csp

well he does have a decent chance of winning your state

latest Elon poll on our anti-gay marriage prop shows 61% opposed - if we don't pass the bill California did I will mail the crow directly to you

The Elon poll doesn't screen out non-voters though - the most recent PPP poll that is a voter poll is a bit more pessimistic:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/03/north-carolinians-support-but-dont-understand-marriage-amendment.html

(though there's still room for a little optimism there if the anti-Amendment One can get the message across before May, and the end of the contested GOP primary season will also help, perhaps)

(Andrew Sullivan, yes, he wd be stupid enough)

the debt ceiling/credit downgrade thing is one of the things that makes me think that choosing a sitting rep or senator as veep was a bad call for romney - a governor would have taken that tool out of the hands of obama/biden, and i think it could be a pretty effective attack point.

Obama strikes me as the least egotistical president since... Carter?

Why did Eisenhower pick Nixon, then? He clearly couldn't stand him.

btw croup, I am not a pacifist. I can kneecap somebody for ya when I am 100%.

non-egomaniacs do not become POTUS

Obama strikes me as the least egotistical president since... Carter?

Call it supreme self-confidence then. And I certainly do agree with some of his critics: the guy can be thin skinned.

covered his right flank--missed that. That's basically what I mean; "pressured" was the wrong word.

And I certainly do agree with some of his critics: the guy can be thin skinned.

I can't think of any examples. . . ?

Why did Eisenhower pick Nixon, then? He clearly couldn't stand him.

back then the convention had a bit more say than the candidate

Also: during the Checkers speech Nixon deftly got himself into the ticket after he implicated Ike for getting a sweet tax deal on his memoirs. Ike never trusted him again.

I'm sure the same is true of Romney and Ryan: you can't pressure the Supreme Private Equity Maven to do anything.

anyone read Ezra Klein this morning?

I want to stop here and say that even the definition of “true” that we’re using is loose. “Legitimate” might be a better word. The search wasn’t for arguments that were ironclad. It was just for arguments — for claims about Obama’s record — that were based on a reasonable reading of the facts, and that weren’t missing obviously key context.
For instance: Obama really has expanded the size and generosity of the food stamps program. He really has been picking winners and losers in the energy sector. He really does intend to raise taxes on the rich. He really does foresee the federal government spending more a decade from now than it was spending five years ago. He really did push an unelected board of health-care bureaucrats to make decisions about Medicare reimbursement rates. He really did want to raise the price of dirty energy. He really hasn’t released a plan that would ever balance the budget. He really did break his pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 when he signed the Affordable Care Act.

But Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan. The plan is right here. You simply can’t say the president broke his promise to keep your GM plant open. The decision to close the plant was made before he entered office — and, by the way, the guy at the top of your ticket opposed the auto bailout. You simply can’t argue that the Affordable Care Act was a government takeover of the health-care system. My doctor still works for Kaiser Permanente, a private company that the government does not own. You simply can’t say that Obama, who was willing to follow historical precedent and sign a clean debt ceiling increase, caused the S&P downgrade, when S&P clearly said it was due to congressional gridlock and even wrote that it was partly due to the GOP’s dogmatic position on taxes.

After rereading Ryan’s speech, I went back to Sarah Palin’s 2008 convention address. Perhaps, I thought, this is how these speeches always are. But Palin’s criticisms, agree or disagree, held up. “This is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state Senate.” True. She accused Obama of wanting to “make government bigger” and of intending to “take more of your money.” That’s not how the Obama campaign would have explained its intentions, but the facts are the facts, and they did have plans to grow the size of government and raise more in tax revenues. Palin said that “terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay” and “he wants to meet them without preconditions,” which was true enough.

gotta love that last paragraph:

We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both.

so courageous, ezra!

JUST TELL THE FUCKING TRUTH ALL OF THE TIME YOU'RE A JOURNALIST

^^^^^^^^^^^^

We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame.

This is pretty sad

journalists love to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame so much that it takes one of the most prominent political events/speeches of the year, packed with nearly unprecedented amounts of blatant lies, to shake a few journalists out of their rut and get to mention that paul ryan just shoved a bunch of putrid shit down the throats of anyone unlucky enough to pay attention to him speak

pretty sure Klein was clearing his throat for the sake of newbies. The guy's been dissecting Ryan's budget for the last two years.

doesn't come off as throat clearing at all--he seems genuinely surprised at the level of lying, esp. since he goes back to Palin's speech

yeah, but...I mean, this is the first paragraph of his piece:

The original pitch was for “the five biggest lies in Paul Ryan’s speech.” I said no. It’s not that the speech didn’t include some lies. It’s that I wanted us to bend over backward to be fair, to see it from Ryan’s perspective, to highlight its best arguments as well as its worst. So I suggested an alternative: The true, the false, and the misleading in Ryan’s speech. (Note here that we’re talking about political claims, not personal ones. Ryan’s biography isn’t what we’re examining here though, for the record, I found his story deeply moving.)

An hour later, the draft came in — Dylan Matthews is a very fast writer. There was one item in the “true” section.

and then he goes on to describe how he painstakingly went through the entire speech himself in an attempt to add at least a few more sorta truthy things to it. yeah, he's been critical of ryan and the gop in the past, of course. but i don't think that's just "clearing his throat", i think that's him desperately looking for ways to balance things out a little bit so that next time he sees paul ryan in a hotel lobby he doesn't have to grovel quite so much.

xpost

it would be very awkward in the halls of power if prominent journalists actually told the truth for a day

good luck usa media

Klein's style isn't truculence; he's got the air of a well-intentioned econ grad student. But he certainly hasn't groveled on Chris Hayes' show. And I read the intro here as an attempt to at least try to assuage an audience that's primed to call him part of the liberal media elite.

try to assuage an audience that's primed to call him part of the liberal media elite.

good fuckin luck with that! he's Mr. Journolist.

painstakingly went through the entire speech himself in an attempt to add at least a few more sorta truthy things to it.

I agree with this. Like the grocery list he cites from the Palin speech.

elsewhere David Frum wonders why it can't be 1996 and Ryan can't be Kemp.

this is for morbz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCsGSMze_6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFEhmF-cSi8

Had no idea Frum had this novel called Patriots out: "America's first black president has just lost re-election. A new leader tries to pull the country out of a terrible recession--only to face a devilish plot from inside his own party."

Isn't there a clip of Nixon playing alongside Duke Ellington at the White House?

Close, not quite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAMm5qn50VA

Reality disconnect #589: "WE BUILT IT! WE BUILT IT! WE BUILT IT! We create the jobs and we drive the economy! Oh yeah, except everything wrong is the President's fault. Cos he's in control of the economy."

Who are the mystery speakers? 'Cause I wanna know. No mention of Hologram Nixon.

Clint will be one, surely.

it's totally gonna be eastwood

"it's the end of the game in America, and we lost. let's invent a new sport we'll be good at."

oh also also have we taken the time to lol @ the genius campaign slogan "We Can Change It"

there are nearly six thousand posts in the thread and it's high season for politics, you hae to load the whole thread to see what you missed if you leave the house for a couple of hours. it is time for a new thread. I don't know what symmetry requires, if anything, but it's time.

Symmetry demands it.

dude, bookmark it, its all the rage. i actually did that for the first time for this thread!

I use bookmarks Scott but it really is time. Bookmarks do not mean the end of starting new threads when one thread is ridiculously long

done!

mods, please...?

Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2