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

"complaining"

aero, just fyi, but my calling out of privilege here came after morbz pulled a "but maybe i'm a racist" crack based on an earlier thread where he was called out for mocking that TNC article about race without having read it. So while it did devolve to my bar speech about why adding your voice to a liberal mandate is better than pretending there's no difference between the parties (as well as my acknowledgment that most people who say they won't vote because everyone's gross tends not to have a lot else on the line - frankly, like Carlin), it didn't start there. If morbz was like, "no my life would be worse under republicans but i am a pacificist who can not take part in american atrocities" i would then just be like "huh surprised you troll so much" but cede the point.

i don't vote but i have only lived in blue-ass states. maybe if i lived in some scary place i would vote. who knows. i do love that obama is president even though i kinda hate presidents and the government. just cuz i never thought i would live to see an african-american president. was kinda hoping that more venom-spewing racists would have killed themselves after he was elected though. or move to antarctica. chickenshits.

scott is most Carlinesque poster

tbh as much as i dislike romney/bain and everything abt him, i am more freaked out about the possibility of a vp that is pretty much dedicated to economic devastation getting the countrys nod. i had kinda hit the resignation/acceptance thing abt the possibility of romney in the white house, but ryan fucking freaks me out the same way that pawlenty as a veep would have. romney is an asshole, but ryan strikes me as deeply evil.

could we try something new and not impugn each other's motives? Cuz we don't know them.

Even more than Bush-Cheney in 2000 this is a party that has for all intents and purposes has empowered the vice president to set the agenda

morbz would you prefer i just said you were foolish and deluded?

the way i see it, the only reason to vote at the national level is because of social issues

This is just what i was thinking.

Certainly there are racist folks who really respond to welfare demonizing, but i think as a platform it's more classist, designed to keep the poor poor, than specifically targeting minorities.

if Morbz hated Obama and held all modern presidents in contempt before he was elected, why should we even care how he thinks the guy is doing at the job

compared to the other stuff, well yeah

xxp

Even more than Bush-Cheney in 2000 this is a party that has for all intents and purposes has empowered the vice president to set the agenda

True, because this time they're actually spelling out what the veep's agenda is. In 2000 they let everyone sort of assume it would be GHWB II.

White racism/racial paranoia intensified after Obama's election, especially the pugnacious/prideful form of intransigence so beloved by the kind of white folks who fall back on 'overseer class' behaviour when dealing with people of colour who, for some INEXPLICABLE reason, have accomplished more than the overseers in question. I was taken by surprise when it happened, but at the same time they all used 2000 to justify their Sore Loser Plus behaviour. In my optimism I thought attrition/progress/time would kill all these fuckers before 2020. Sigh.

Related: a Sullivan reader on this bizarre disconnect in Rice's speech last night.

when Obama tells his story, he's believed by many to be a foreigner with a faked birth certificate, a weak affirmative action beneficiary who can't give a speech without a teleprompter, and contemptible. When Rice tells her story she is greeted with raucous applause and old folks moved to tears.

wow, that fox article describing the ryan speech really was harsh! surprising...

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth.

prior to this speech I was kind of unsure as to where Ryan fell on the idiot/asshole divide (ie, does he really believe what he says/is unable to do basic math or is he just a cynically exploitative creep who's hiding his real agenda of evil behind a bunch of rhetoric) and now I'm pretty sure he's on the asshole divide. Nixon parallel is interesting.

the most astounding thing for me in the ryan speech (which is echoed in the fox thing) was him pinning the credit downgrade on obama which actually led to me standing up and pointing at the tv shouting "motherfucker that was you" which scared the hell out of my dog

also there is a pretty great video from august 18 where he delivers pretty much that same speech about his moms small business triumph right down to the double eye manly these arent tears duct tug

living in massachusetts, i do thank mitt for the affordable communist health insurance.

you don't understand, everything that happens in a president's term is the president's fault

xp

how much do we have to pay obama to call mitt's mass health care act a socialist experiment during a debate?

also there is a pretty great video from august 18 where he delivers pretty much that same speech about his moms small business triumph right down to the double eye manly these arent tears duct tug

that line about how we get our rights from god not government was the big cheer-getter at his first speech as romney's pick too

at this point i am just hoping that they unchain biden during the vp debates and let him go ham on ryan. like right short of crossing the stage and slapping him.

Paul Ryan v Joe Biden at the veep debate is going be...well, interesting, certainly

actually wait, it would be awesome if he slapped him. but probably not politically expedient

some wonk on mpr this morning was talking abt how key the vp debates could be, because biden is set in a perfect position to deflate the whole ryan dishwashing coming up from nothing story, because biden is a legit working class bootstraps dude, unlike the son of a lawyer from jaynesville wisconsin

I find the Nixon parallels really interesting, too. Wasn't Eisenhower also pressured to take on Nixon in '52 to pacify the base? Nixon would have been 39 at the time. He was loved for standing up to Communism (insert appropriate quotation marks); Ryan for standing up to the current office-holder's secret tilt towards same.

after which he strips to the waist and beats him in three rounds of bare-knuckle boxing xpost

he most astounding thing for me in the ryan speech (which is echoed in the fox thing) was him pinning the credit downgrade on obama which actually led to me standing up and pointing at the tv shouting "motherfucker that was you" which scared the hell out of my dog

i didn't see the speech, but i can't believe he would go anywhere near that topic. the fact that he CAN go there without getting laughed out of the room is a testament to the horse blinder insanity of the GOP in attendance (i picture them all as frodo and gollum fighting for the ring with madness in their eyes) and the ignorance of the public as to what was actually going on with that last year.

let him go ham on ryan

Can't tell if the wordplay was intentional or not--nice!

hahahaha i wish i was that clever! from here on out i will claim that i was.

Obama had a few chances to try and nip that thing in the bud before it even came up. He was too trusting of the GOP and while this is sort of back-stabbing yeah maybe a stronger president would have been more calculated in assessing the viciousness of the opposing party and shutting down their lines of attack on him and US credit. I mean, he was pretty aware of the whole debt-ceiling thing for months before it happened.

Though certainly "GOP held America hostage" is a great line for any Dems up for re-election.

there were some stray bits of that ryan speech where while i wish someone else had made the accusation against obama, i'm glad obama's going to have answer them.

I really don't think Obama is stupid enough to underestimate the viciousness of the opposing party. The answer lies somewhere else.

Wasn't Eisenhower also pressured to take on Nixon in '52 to pacify the base?

Eisenhower was so popuar – then and after his presidency – that once he crushed the Taft faction he could do what he wanted. No doubt Nixon covered his right flank but you couldn't pressure the Supreme Commander to do anything.

to have to answer them, i mean xpost

I really don't think Obama is stupid enough to underestimate the viciousness of the opposing party. The answer lies somewhere else.

It's ego. If you read his books he genuinely thinks he has a talent for comity.

(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.