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

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