Month: November 2012

Posted by AzblueMeanie: The latest Latino Decisions weekly tracking poll finds 8 percent of Latinos have already voted early, enthusiasm up again in final week: The latest impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking poll shows that Latinos are more enthusiastic and more likely to vote than ten weeks ago when the initial poll was fielded.  Forty-five percent of … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In the final days of the presidential race, a desperate Team Romney has resorted to what you might call a Kamikaze strategy. Greg Sargent explains in Mitt Romney’s Kamikaze strategy:

His campaign is cranking out a startling number of falsehoods and
sleazy attacks, drawing widespread condemnation in the media that could
ultimately crash his campaign, because that condemnation dovetails with
Obama’s closing character argument against him.

Of course, the Kamikaze analogy only goes so far. If Romney’s
calculation proves correct — and all the ad spending overwhelms whatever
criticism his falsehoods and distortions draw in the media — his quest
for the presidency would obviously come to fruition, rather than perish.

However, our democracy as we have known it for more than 200 years would perish under the weight of voters rewarding Big Lie GOPropaganda.

[T]he Ohio press continues to pound Romney for the centerpiece of this
Kamikaze strategy: His false claims about the auto-bailout and Jeep
supposedly moving American jobs to China. Dems are circulating this scorching editorial in the Youngstown Vindicator
that hits Romney’s Jeep lie as an “insult to Ohians” and bluntly states
that Romney is “no friend of the auto in­dus­try, on which Ohio re­lies
for one of ev­ery eight jobs.” Another hard-hitting editorial in the Toledo Blade
blasts Romney for an “ex­er­cise in de­cep­tion about auto-in­dus­try
is­sues that is re­mark­able even by the stan­dards of his cam­paign.”

All of this feeds directly into the final argument Obama is making
about Romney’s character, integrity, and authenticity: He’ll shamelessly
say anything to win and as a result you can’t trust him on anything,
let alone to look out for your interests. Romney is banking that he can
surf past all the media and Obama camp criticism on a wave of last
minute ad spending. Refusing to answer questions from the press is
central to pulling that off. If Romney were to take questions from
reporters, he’d be asked to answer for all of this stuff.

After all, when reporters do press him on his dishonesty and/or
evasions, the results aren’t pretty. Romney faced harsh criticism for
his refusal to answer questions about whether he still agreed with his
previous suggestion that he favors transferring FEMA responsibilities to
the states.

* * *

None of this is to say Romney’s closing strategy can’t work. But it’s a pretty massive and audacious gamble on his part.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has been a belicose, loud-mouthed, shrill partisan attack dog in support of Willard "Mittens" Romney as his campaign surrogate. Gov. Christie was Romney's keynote speaker at the GOP convention.

Since super-storm Sandy devastated New Jersey earlier this week, Gov. Christie has had to eat his harsh words. President Obama has demonstrated his commander-in-chief leadership in working directly with the governors of the states affected by Sandy, and demonstrated that the federal government can respond effectively in a disaster to the needs of its citizens, unlike the bumbling fools of the George W. Bush administration afer Hurricane Katrina.

Gov. Chrisite has been effusive in his praise of President Obama. It is almost as if he has a new best friend. In the closing week of the campaign, Gov. Christie is making the closing argument for Obama. Let's just call this the "October Surprise." Gov. Christie praises Obama's leadership amidst Sandy:

Christie said Wednesday with the President by his side, “We spent a
significant afternoon together surveying the damage up and down the New
Jersey coastline; we were on Marine One together to be able to show the
President that personally. I had an opportunity to see it, and we had
an opportunity to discuss it at length. And then, going over to the
shelter here, being able to meet with folks to have them see the
President and his concern, and the concern that all of us have for
making sure that things get back to normal as quickly as possible.”

He added, “He has worked incredibly closely with me since before the
storm hit. I think this is our sixth conversation since the weekend,
and it’s been a great working relationship to make sure that we’re doing
the jobs that people elected us to do. And I cannot thank the
President enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state
and for the people of our state.”

President Obama also praised Christie's response saying, “The first thing I want to do is just to thank everybody who
has been involved in the entire rescue and recovery process. At the top
of my list, I have to say that Governor Christie throughout this
process has been responsive; he has been aggressive in making sure that
the state got out in front of this incredible storm.”

* * *

When asked by FAUX News if he would offer to give a tour of his storm-ravaged city to candidate Romney, Christie noted that he had a job to do and replied, “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

Posted by Bob Lord This post is the last in my three part series. It adopts the perspective that the great majority of voters are functionally illiterate, while assuming there is a real difference between the two choices. My own view is somewhere between this view and that of Chris Hedges, described here, but perhaps … Read more