Try to keep the posts with some substance here. Well, just to do some forward looking now, here's RCP's map of how the electoral college looks. Obama starting off at 227 out of the 270 electoral college votes he needs, and Romney at 170. 11 toss ups. Returning battleground states (according to Politico) Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are joined by Iowa and Arizona. Obama only needs a few of those states to win, and he's positioned well in several of them (and in others, Romney's positioned poorly) While I'm surprised to see Arizona being considered, Missouri and Colorado both represented bad nights for Romney. Most of the states are represented by old polling, but just at the moment Arizona and Missouri are the only two states that Romney is really seeming to be the primary leader in the polls, the rest of the states are either always polling slight leads for Obama (eg Nevada and Colorado) or have outliers showing Romney winning, indicating thats at least obtainable (eg Florida and New Hampshire). North Carolina is the only one that really is back and forth. When you remove Arizona and Nevada, that's 120 electoral votes available for Obama, and he only needs 43 of them. That's not much, and it's something he could do with as few as two of those states, Florida and either Ohio or Pennsylvania. It would be a very tough bill for Romney to win with just those states in play, and he's really going to have to hope that something shifts the balance a bit, and he can get several states currently being considered as leaning Obama to be a bit more competitive. Michigan, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Minnesota would be the ones to focus on, roughly in that order. None of those are particularly strong for him, though, and so that's going to be a bit of a high bar unless something happens for him to put those in play. There's a lot of election left to go, but Romney's definitely got his back against the wall for this one. That said, he does seem posed to do at least better than McCain did.
Remember all the outrage THE OUTRAGE!!!!! about the DNC-er who said that Ann Romney hasn't worked a day in her life"? Well...according to Mitt Romney, stay-at-home parents lack "the dignity of work."
There's a difference between describing people who choose to stay home, vs. people who have to stay home/rely on welfare. He's talking about stay-at-home parents who are relying on welfare. Also, lol at MSNBC. Is this an opinion show or "news"? EDIT: Also his comments are not condescending or insulting here. He's just saying that parents who have to rely on welfare, lack the dignity of work. What the DNC-er said was insulting, which is why President Obama denounced her comments and distanced himself from them.
This is a Senate thread so I'm going to refrain from my usual quips here, but this is absolutely comparing apples to bananas.
This is all just going through the motions in the end anyway. Obama will take the oath of office from John Roberts again in January of 2013, and this time they'll get it right. Romney does not have what it takes to win a presidential election. He got pasted by Kennedy in '94, and the blueprint from that campaign will do him in again in November.
I think that even though Romney is not an inspiring candidate...neither is Obama. I think either one could win.
The President is the incumbent, which is a huge advantage. The only elected incumbent to run and not win re-election since WWII was H.W. Bush in 1992. Saying "either one could win" is silly to me. Mike listed various reasons above why the President is and should be favored to win re-election. No statistic takes into account the number of times Romney opens his mouth and inserts not just his foot, but his leg as well. He is his own worst enemy, and will make a number of major errors on the campaign trail. He's not a natural politician, and as I've said before, he's in his position only because of his money. He's been a lousy campaigner throughout his political career, which is part of why he's won just once in the campaigns he's run. Kennedy was beatable in 1994, but the old lion destroyed Romney in October, using the same points that he is still vulnerable to (i.e. Bain). Romney's campaign is just getting set up throughout most of the nation. The Obama campaign is highly organized in most states, with more offices right now than they had in the 2008 campaign. There are real people on real ground doing real work, and that's something the Romney campaign can't do much about. They can match it, or try to, but the Obama campaign has had a major head start and they've taken advantage of it. It's part of why they'll win. The President is vulnerable on the economy, of course, but every president is. Romney has major liabilities of his own, and they'll bring him down in November.
Well, that's partly because Truman and Johnson dropped out before they could be thoroughly embarrassed by being defeated in the primaries.
Then again, when even the NYT is calling out the hypocrisy in this administration, I think the President should be concerned. It's almost becoming too easy of late to demonstrate how the President is just another politician. If he does lose in the end, I think that will be why.
Was it, though? I think Obama wisely moved away from the comments, as the optics were poor, and her remarks came off wrong in isolation. But if you insist on viewing things in context, you'll note she was reacting with incredulity to the notion that Romney uses his wife as a source of information about the economic struggles of women. It's not some wild point. As Romney himself frames the issue with his "92% of jobs lost" talking point, he's referencing working women--those whose incomes are a vital and necessary part of their family's finances. As Rosen noted (in somewhat crass fashion) this has indeed never been the case for Ann Romney. So it's not at all apparent how she would be a good source of information about it. By comparison, Marco Rubio is Cuban-American. Many people of Hispanic descent who migrate to the US have the unique challenge of learning English as a second language. He however, did not. It would therefore be absurd for anyone to say that Senator Rubio "reports to them" on the perspective of people who are struggling to learn English (or don't know it at all) just because one part of his broader identity is a demographic group that experiences in this problem. In the same way, Ann Romney doesn't magically understand all potential problems women face, just because she is female. The special difficulties of being a women in the workplace is one of those she doesn't have personal access to.
I'd actually agree with all that. I hate identity politics. The fact that I grew up as a poor, black kid in Jamaica (or Obama as a middle-class kid in Hawaii) does not give me special insight into the plight of inner-city kids in South Central LA. I might have a bit more insight than say a rich white guy from Martha's Vineyard, but I'm certainly not an expert. (Ok. I definitely have a lot more insight, but still ) All that said, saying a woman "never worked a day in her life" is a bit insulting, regardless of the context. Primarly because it's not true. Her larger point, however, was valid.
I would agree depending on how one defines "identity politics." Empathy is, in my opinion, an imaginative act that is bounded by the limits of our personal experience. The more two people's experiences approximate, the better the chances of substantive understanding. That to say I think it is a genuine and valid phenomenon in some cases. I think it was more or less appropriate for George W Bush to argue he had a better understanding of evangelicals than other candidates. Similarly, a lot of it's uses along racial, gender, and economic lines both have been and are valid to me. What I dislike is absurdly over-extending them, in the "I have a black friend" style of rebutting charges of racism.
In this context, I'm defining identity politics to mean ascribing significant credence to someone's views simply because they share a passing relationship with one group or the other, even though they may have more differences in their background from the group than similarities. In this case, for example, Romney is trying to use his wife's identity as a woman to give him credibility on issues important to american women. The only things Mrs. Romney shares with most american women is plumbing. Then again, the same can be said of pretty much every politician. When they say "I'm one of you", I roll my eyes every time.
@Jabba-wocky Along the lines of what Souderwan said--Rosen's faux pas was her wording, not the the point she was leaning on. She was rude.
