Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

Then he talks about raising his douchebag of a son who got turfed out in the primaries the other week.

the 5 undecideds who remain are gonna be really pissed off about this

There have been swings in the last month. People can decide to stay home, too.

Yeah good luck there:

"Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work," Romney spokesperson Gail Gitcho said in a statement. "Mitt Romney's plan creates 12 million new jobs in four years, grows the economy and moves Americans off of government dependency and into jobs."

that Dan Quayle autobiography is 70 cents on amazon (1 cent used)

i wonder how many jobs get created every time one is sold

Enjoying the roffles here:

Nine hundred of Mitt Romney’s biggest benefactors — from Wall Street traders to hedge fund managers — gathered in a ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning to send their candidate on the two-month sprint to Election Day.

Spencer Zwick, the campaign’s national finance chairman and a longtime Romney loyalist, took to the lectern to boast: “It is really turning into a cause. The momentum continues.”

But the donors, being data guys, knew Romney’s momentum had stalled. And when they looked up at the Jumbotron to watch a biographical video showing the GOP nominee as warmblooded, goofy and even a bit frugal, it was the culmination of much of what Republicans say is wrong with the Romney campaign: There is a great story to be told, and it isn’t being shared with the country.

I'd pay the extra sixty-nine cents for a new copy of Quayle's book, but that's just me. ($75 for a signed copy of Standing Firm on AbeBooks--as dirt-cheap as that gets for the top two spots. Mondale's signed bio goes for $125.)

great story == goofy Mitt... for president?

David Frum on Twitter:

"Only this guy can help Romney now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLsDvGlIDh0

A fairly evenhanded (and perhaps even more damning) take on the context of Romney's comments.

Jonah knows there's a problem.

I like how pretty much all the reactions on the right can be summed up as 'why doesn't he talk like this all the time! we'd surely win!' Yeah have fun with that.

Pretty squishy, for sure: "I have my doubts," "let me concede," "I suspect," "I’m not sure it wouldn’t help." God, he sounds like me.

The odd thing about Goldberg's column is that it blandly compiles a list of facts showing that Romney apparently has no feel for the bedrock of political reality whatsoever -- and then he dismisses everything he has to say about Romney's inability to understand basic facts about the electorate as having no importance to the election.

He also claims that the "bitterly clinging to guns and religion" comments from Obama during the 2008 campaign did no apparent harm to Obama at all, which seems an odd argument coming from him.

Wait, I just read this at Balloon Juice:

Corn also just said that the fundraiser took place at the home of private equity muckity muck Marc Leder, who made headlines when he threw a sex party in 2011. (That ought to go over well with the values voter crowd.)

Apparently he does stuff like this as well:

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/parties_high_bar_hnNHG3a85TrmiVmoXP5ohP

I feel like there should be some mention of the fact that "red states" are net recipients of Federal money, and "blue states" are net exporters of tax dollars.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-18/politics/30039546_1_blue-states-federal-taxes-red-states

am i alone in finding romney's campaign inspiring?

he makes me think, "i could run a much better campaign than that, maybe i should get into politics!"

I would vote for all this z s

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/mitt-romneys-clinging-to-guns-or-religion-moment/262496/

The difference in Obama's comments is that they were essentially empathetic, even though he landed on a caricature that obscured that: "And they felt through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate, and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." I cut and paste, so I'm not sure if the grammar was originally that fractured. Anyway, I still see a basic empathy there...am I alone in that?

"vote for me: I don't hate 47% of you"

Anyway here we go re Leder:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/romney-secret-video-marc-leder-sex-parties

Pretty squishy, for sure:

Well, this is Goldberg: a squish whose "prose" can't hide his cowardice. He still won't piss off anybody.

and Friedersdorf is NOT otm; it's a false equivalence. Obama wanted to woo the voters who clung to guns and religion.

(whether his policies have helped them at all is another matter)

The "sex parties" thing is a fun detail but I hope it doesn't muddy the waters with respect to the words that came out of Romney's mouth.

I think sex parties will be stuck in third place behind Latino joke (relatively little attention thus far) and giving-up-on-loser-vote. It's a crowded field there.

yeah, i'm the kind of liberal who doesn't see anything wrong with sex parties at all (not that i'm ever throwing or attending sex parties). it's just sex, at a party, who cares. but yeah i guess it would be shocking for a lot of voters

nobody even invites me to sex parties

I get invitations non-stop, but really, who has the time?

Mr. Leder personifies the debates now swirling around this lucrative corner of finance. To his critics, he represents everything that's wrong with this setup. In recent years, a large number of the companies that Sun Capital has acquired have run into serious trouble, eliminated jobs or both. Since 2008, some 25 of its companies—roughly one of every five it owns—have filed for bankruptcy. Among the losers was Friendly's, the restaurant chain known for its Jim Dandy sundaes and Fribble shakes. (Sun Capital was accused by a federal agency of pushing Friendly's into bankruptcy last year to avoid paying pensions to the chain's employees; Sun disputes that contention.) Another company that sank into bankruptcy was Real Mex, owner of the Chevy's restaurant chain. In that case, Mr. Leder lost money for his investors not once, but twice.

He killed Friendly's!

Now this is personal.

you have to mill around outside having sex for a long time until someone at the party notices that you're ok with it and lets you in

Mother Jones now releasing photos from Romney's fundraiser.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1DgDTIh-v0U/UB68wrf4u6I/AAAAAAAAH2A/PQgwtglQBWo/s400/eyes-wide-shut-ritual-sex-party.png

Latino joke (relatively little attention thus far)

yeah no shit, what the fuck is this

So apparently Romney's lurking somewhere here in Costa Mesa and according to Twitter:

COSTA MESA, CA. (AP): Romney: Comment calling Americans 'victims' was 'not elegantly stated,' spoken 'off the cuff'

Fribble shakes

a neurological frailty after eating Friendly's?

hot teen fribble video xxx

Link to AP bit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/romney-comment-calling-americans-victims-was-not-elegantly-stated-spoken-off-the-cuff/2012/09/17/ba7f840e-0135-11e2-bbf0-e33b4ee2f0e8_story.html

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A3ChYxVCIAIS9Rc.png

lol oh shit

the pundits-on-twitter reaction that this is going to harm romney among 47% voters is hilarious/crazy to me, and feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of what the 47% meme is all about, which is basically just declaring yr team vis-a-vis producers vs parasittes

like remember how many of the 53%ers on that stupid tumblr were actually/clearly 47%ers? no one for whom this idea resonates is actually checking their tax forms. even if they pay no income tax they ~know~ that theyre heroic producers/job creators, and those people are just leechers. you know, those people *winks*

mitt is "owning" the gaffe b/c theres no real downside, it fires up his base, the press already hates him and thinks hes going to lose

typical lazy/meretricious punditry accepting the terms proffered by the candidates

max otm

it fires up his base, the press already hates him and thinks hes going to lose

Wasn't his base supposedly already fired up? Something like this strengthens the perception, rightly or wrongly, that he's going to lose; I don't see how that fires up the base any more. This may or may not hurt him. I can't see that it helps him at all--he's supposedly trying to make up ground in the remaining six weeks.

There's a way to say what Romney said in a "fire up the base" way but in the video he comes off as a callous creep who does not give a shit about half the country.

OTM. This will hurt his chances even with some people who may have otherwise voted for him.

feel like constant gaffes all in the news arent helping romney any even if individual incidences might not affect the situation much, its more of a cumulative thing

yeah the media smells blood in the water

This will dominate the news at a moment where Romney really needed positive news. Romney is behind and needs a win, so even if there was no "real downside" to this, it would still be catastrophical.