rope a dope.

10/4/2012 12:48:28 PM

Nah, it's pretty clear what happened last night. Obama came in prepared to debate Romney on the positions he's been taking throughout the entire campaign. Instead, Romney came in and claimed a whole new set of positions that are totally at odds with everything else he's said up to this point. Obama was either unable or unwilling to adjust and just let Romney rant unabated. It was a great strategy for Romney to win a debate, which he needed to do, but the problem is that he's now talked himself into a corner on a number of critical issues. The Obama campaign has already released a couple ads capitalizing on this and Obama's rally today was all about how Romney was completely full of shit.

[Edited on October 4, 2012 at 3:24 PM. Reason : :]

10/4/2012 3:23:13 PM

30+ months of private sector job growth, and an unemployment rate (admittedly not the best indicator) below the 8% mark which so many talking heads at least said was the magic number for re-election or not, below what it was when the President took office.

10/5/2012 9:34:43 AM

Lots of very angry people on twitter about the good jobs news. I don't really understand that but whatever. It's sort of like rooting for another terrorist attack under Bush.

10/5/2012 9:43:24 AM

my staunchly republican father is utterly outraged, mostly because he sees it as a nail in the coffin for Romeny and co.

10/5/2012 11:18:13 AM

maybe the angry people are the ones who have been laid off and have given up looking for work and are thus removed from the "unemployed" category.

10/5/2012 11:21:56 AM

Because, you know, thats a new part of the unemployment numbers that they just started including and everything

sour grapes motherfuckers

10/5/2012 11:23:31 AM

^^amazingly there have always been those people. funny how no one ever mentioned them until the numbers started rebounding.

10/5/2012 11:29:04 AM

Sadly nobody cares, they just want him out. My uncles will blatantly say "I don't care, I just want him to fail!"

What the hell

10/5/2012 11:34:17 AM

This is nothing new, remember back to the debt limit debate. Republicans were willing to destroy the economy to beat Obama.

Over something as dumb as paying for debt that had already been spent. The issue didn't even have anything to do with new spending, they were okay with letting our country default to beat Obama.

We are lucky that we got away with only have a republican-caused credit rating reduction


Hell, and also, think about Obamacare. Obamacare is a conservative plan created by conservatives. Its the result of democrats mistakenly thinking they could compromise with republicans. They are still talking about repealing it.

[Edited on October 5, 2012 at 11:39 AM. Reason : .]

10/5/2012 11:38:12 AM

Unemployment down, participation up, and significant upward revisions to previous months. Other than the top line jobs added number, this is the best report since the spring. No good for Romney since this will probably wash away any gains from his debate performance.

10/5/2012 11:42:41 AM

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/meet-the-incredible-incoherent-jobs-report-truthers/263285/

10/5/2012 11:48:20 AM

Quote :

"Because, you know, thats a new part of the unemployment numbers that they just started including and everything"

huh?

10/5/2012 11:55:21 AM

So now Romney back tracks on his 47% statement, is this a bad move consider how it gives Obama the opportunity to show that he will say whatever to whomever is listening?

10/5/2012 11:59:01 AM

too much sarcasm?

that has always been a factor in the numbers

10/5/2012 11:59:27 AM

I'm more and more convinced Obama let Romney 'win' the first debate. His whole "why even bother?" attitude makes a lot more sense in hindsight, considering the news about the economy. He probably knew the numbers before the debate even started.

[Edited on October 5, 2012 at 12:24 PM. Reason : reminds of the whole Bin Laden thing where was smug as hell before dropping the news]

10/5/2012 12:16:11 PM

the Bureau of Labor Statistics disagrees:

Quote :

"Who is counted as unemployed? Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work. "

10/5/2012 12:16:52 PM

nm. doesn't get sarcasm

[Edited on October 5, 2012 at 12:24 PM. Reason : ]

10/5/2012 12:23:31 PM

Quote :

"Wednesday night's debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney underscored a core truth about America's presidential election season: the vast majority of the most consequential policy questions are completely excluded from the process. This fact is squarely at odds with a primary claim made about the two parties – that they represent radically different political philosophies – and illustrates how narrow the range of acceptable mainstream political debate is in the country. In part this is because presidential elections are now conducted almost entirely like a tawdry TV reality show. Personality quirks and trivialities about the candidates dominate coverage, and voter choices, leaving little room for substantive debates. But in larger part, this exclusion is due to the fact that, despite frequent complaints that America is plagued by a lack of bipartisanship, the two major party candidates are in full-scale agreement on many of the nation's most pressing political issues. As a result these are virtually ignored, drowned out by a handful of disputes that the parties relentlessly exploit to galvanise their support base and heighten fear of the other side. Most of what matters in American political life is nowhere to be found in its national election debates. Penal policies vividly illustrate this point. America imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation on earth by far, including countries with far greater populations. As the New York Times reported in April 2008: "The United States has less than 5% of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners." Professor Glenn Loury of Brown University has observed that these policies have turned the US into "a nation of jailers" whose "prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history". The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik called this mass incarceration "perhaps the fundamental fact [of American society], as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850". Even worse, these policies are applied, and arguably designed, with mass racial disparities. One in every four African-American men is likely to be imprisoned. Black and Latino drug users are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at far higher rates than whites, even though usage among all groups is relatively equal. The human cost of this sprawling penal state is obviously horrific: families are broken up, communities are decimated, and those jailed are rendered all but unemployable upon release. But the financial costs are just as devastating. California now spends more on its prison system than it does on higher education, a warped trend repeated around the country. Yet none of these issues will even be mentioned, let alone debated, by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. That is because they have no discernible differences when it comes to any of the underlying policies, including America's relentless fixation on treating drug usage as a criminal, rather than health, problem. The oppressive system that now imprisons 1.8 million Americans, and that will imprison millions more over their lifetime, is therefore completely ignored during the only process when most Americans are politically engaged. This same dynamic repeats itself in other crucial realms. President Obama's dramatically escalated drone attacks in numerous countries have generated massive anger in the Muslim world, continuously kill civilians, and are of dubious legality at best. His claimed right to target even American citizens for extrajudicial assassinations, without a whiff of transparency or oversight, is as radical a power as any seized by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Yet Americans whose political perceptions are shaped by attentiveness to the presidential campaign would hardly know that such radical and consequential policies even exist. That is because here too there is absolute consensus between the two parties. A long list of highly debatable and profoundly significant policies will be similarly excluded due to bipartisan agreement. The list includes a rapidly growing domestic surveillance state that now monitors and records even the most innocuous activities of all Americans; job-killing free trade agreements; climate change policies; and the Obama justice department's refusal to prosecute the Wall Street criminals who precipitated the 2008 financial crisis. On still other vital issues, such as America's steadfastly loyal support for Israel and its belligerence towards Iran, the two candidates will do little other than compete over who is most aggressively embracing the same absolutist position. And this is all independent of the fact that even on the issues that are the subject of debate attention, such as healthcare policy and entitlement "reform", all but the most centrist positions are off limits. The harm from this process is not merely the loss of what could be a valuable opportunity to engage in a real national debate. Worse, it is propagandistic: by emphasising the few issues on which there is real disagreement between the parties, the election process ends up sustaining the appearance that there is far more difference between the two parties, and far more choice for citizens, than is really offered by America's political system. One way to solve this problem would be to allow credible third-party candidates into the presidential debates and to give them more media coverage. Doing so would highlight just how similar Democrats and Republicans have become, and what little choice American voters actually have on many of the most consequential policies. That is exactly why the two major parties work so feverishly to ensure the exclusion of those candidates: it is precisely the deceitful perception of real choice that they are most eager to maintain."

--Glenn Greenwald

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/04/third-party-us-presidential-debate-deceit

Quote :

"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.[/b]"

--Sheldon Wolin


[Edited on October 5, 2012 at 12:49 PM. Reason : ]

10/5/2012 12:27:09 PM

^Good reads.

On the other hand the rest of this page is just a bunch of assholes patting themselves on the back for some reason.

Just like every other election thread since the debate. How strange.

10/5/2012 1:53:55 PM

Ahh yes the prison system in this country. One of the great forgotten calamities. Let's not try to rehab or teach people, let's keep them in jail so that we can make more money!

10/5/2012 5:52:58 PM

Well what do you expect when you privatize it to for profit companies

10/5/2012 5:56:04 PM

Tax payers dollars have to pay for it at the end of the day.

10/5/2012 7:05:51 PM

god why can't we just have a parliamentary system.

10/5/2012 9:36:41 PM

http://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room/other-news/259491-obama-campaign-breaks-record-with-10m-donations

Quote :

"Obama campaign breaks record with 10 million donations President Obama’s campaign on Monday reported shattering its own record by taking in grassroots donations from more than 10 million people. The surge in donations stems in part from the presidential campaign’s use of major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, where they posted messages over the weekend urging supporters to send in a few dollars to make the goal of 10 million individual donations. The campaign was pushing a new “quick donate” button on its website, which was advertised in a Web video by actors Rashida Jones (“The Office”) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“Modern Family”)."

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/obama-dems-report-raising-record-smashing-181-million-in-september/

Quote :

"Oct 6, 2012 11:12am Obama, Democrats Report Raising Record-Smashing $181 Million in September The Obama Campaign and Democrats report raising a whopping $181 million in September – more money than any presidential campaign has ever raised in a single month. The announcement came this morning on the campaign’s twitter account. The sum shatters the previous record of $150 million set by Obama in September 2008. The most raised by Obama so far this cycle had been $114 million in August. “Some amazing news this morning,” @BarackObama posted on Twitter. “1,825,813 people came together to raise $181 million for this campaign in September.” The campaign credited the huge haul to a surge in grassroots donations, noting that more than half a million donors in September were first-time contributors to Obama."

10/6/2012 12:22:01 PM

JesusHChrist's most recent contribution to this thread is right on.

I really wish we had instant-runoff voting in this country. I don't think IRV would really give minority parties more representation, but I do believe it would change how the majority parties behave. Mixed member voting for legislatures also seems pretty cool. And I don't know how primaries work in other states, but I'm sure they could do with some changing, too. Plus, it's time to let the felons and territories get in on the big votes.

Given how our elections are run, none of us should be surprised that we don't really feel represented. But, when we don't feel represented, we're made to believe it's because we don't line up with the majority, and that there's this majority of people out there who are just peachy with their government. But there isn't. We all feel like we're getting screwed.

10/6/2012 1:10:35 PM

Niether candidates can touch on those topics though because of special interest money

10/6/2012 1:21:37 PM

How bout a candidate that doesn't treat defense, medicare, and social security as sacred cows? That's 75% of spending.

Romney, the supposed "conservative," won't cut any of those. That is absurd.

No candidate can even deign talking about how government financial aid is the very thing causing college to be expensive and inaccessible. They think the american public is too stupid to understand bubbles.

And they might be. Which is why the founders went through contortions to stop the public from voting directly http://www.historycentral.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html

It's too late correct the constitution to make it harder for the general populous to affect the government

10/6/2012 1:45:02 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/06/health/republicans-conflicted-obamacare/index.html#cnn-disqus-area

I thought this was an interesting article that also confirms why Republicans are so desperate to beat Obama and repeal the ACA. They know that once people start benefiting from it, not only will it become impossible to get rid of, it'll be a huge thorn in future elections because not a single one of them voted for it.

10/8/2012 12:41:29 PM

Time to ramp up the character attacks since your President's debate loss was the largest in history.

10/8/2012 1:06:51 PM

^ what metric are you using to determine biggest debate loss in history?

10/8/2012 1:21:16 PM

Yeah, Obama is fucked.



May as well pack it up

10/8/2012 1:27:27 PM

^^The margin by which respondents have indicated Romney won versus Obama?

[Edited on October 8, 2012 at 1:28 PM. Reason : -]

10/8/2012 1:28:08 PM

So are you going to provide the margin numbers for this compared to all past debates, or was it just your opinion?

10/8/2012 1:33:15 PM

72 percent to 20 = 52 point margin.

Previous record holder was 42 points for Clinton over HW Bush.

Of course I know there will be bitching since the source is Gallup, but anyone who saw that 1992 debate can rest assured that figure is probably accurate. I find the under-performers in both debates to be comparatively bad.

10/8/2012 1:40:39 PM

thank you

10/8/2012 1:44:02 PM

People like Shrike make me all the time feel better about the election.

Overconfidence is exactly why Obama now has a problem.

I can only hope his campaign has people like this in abundance.

10/8/2012 1:49:01 PM

I don't think there is any point in arguing how badly Obama lost the debate. It was a terrible performance on his part, even more so when you consider that most Obama supporters, including myself, assumed for months that he would use the debates to decisively expose Romney has a liar and snuff out his candidacy. Instead he looked disinterested, unprepared, and let Romney get away with a litany of brand new lies to a national audience.

Now, how much will it really matter? As y0willy0 loves to point out, I've been extremely bullish on Obama's re-election chances since well before 47%, the conventions, Romney's awful summer, and even before he had the nomination locked up. Why? Because of simple electoral math. Obama has many paths to victory, whereas Romney really only has one: Ohio. Obama could lose Ohio, VA, and Florida, and still win. Romney can't lose any of those states. There is literally nothing between now and the election, including the debates, that will change that.

10/8/2012 2:00:30 PM

For better or worse, I don't understand how someone like you can downplay the effect of televised debates on modern elections.

10/8/2012 2:14:07 PM

I'm not an Obama supporter, but I am a liberal, and I knew Obama was going to lose as soon as they started discussing the debates. It didn't matter how he did, he was going to lose this one.

^most people who watch already decided, most political experts downplay the significance.

[Edited on October 8, 2012 at 2:25 PM. Reason : .]

10/8/2012 2:24:50 PM

Its too little too late. Sure they're televised debates, but there's been televised coverage of the elections for a while now and most people have probably already made up their minds. And even if romney managed to sway a few undecideds, they may get wiped out by the 24hr news cycle. he has no chance.

if he had started his campaign as a centrist from the beginning (and not picked a horrific running mate) he would have probably had a good chance at beating obama. but he also wouldnt have made it out of the republican primary. there was basically no way the current gop could win this one.

10/8/2012 2:28:04 PM

I think you guys are underestimating the current "reality TV" effect that these things will have in the future.

I guess we will see Thursday just how horrific Ryan can be?

Is the overall attitude here now that independents matter little/not at all? Just curious.

10/8/2012 2:32:54 PM

It's not that independents don't matter, it's that they aren't really independents. Something like 2/3s of people who identify as independents these days are really just Republicans who no longer want to be associated with the crazies that have taken over their party. IINOs if you will.

10/8/2012 2:38:27 PM

independent =/= undecided

there are very few undecided voters

[Edited on October 8, 2012 at 2:39 PM. Reason : and polling supports that]

10/8/2012 2:39:06 PM

So basically what you're saying is that people's votes are "locked in" and it doesn't matter how badly Obama portrays himself between now and the election?

Is that correct?

10/8/2012 2:42:25 PM

nothing he said during the debates was outside his already established narrative. certainly nothing that would switch solid obama voters to romney voters. unless he does something incredibly stupid between now and the election, hes gonna win. and it would need to be something really really stupid.

10/8/2012 2:50:59 PM

^^More or less, it would have to be pretty big

10/8/2012 3:12:35 PM

The lack of interest in debating or calling Mitt Romney out on ANYTHING doesn't qualify as big?

What if this continues?

10/8/2012 3:16:31 PM

It's a widely accepted and understood thing that debates don't really matter (usually)

Do presidential debates usually matter? Political scientists say no.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/03/what-political-scientists-know-about-debates/

Fox panel: VP debate won't really matter
http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2012/10/fox-news-sunday-panel-vp-debate-wont-really-matter-137722.html

Do Presidential Debates Really Matter?
Remember all the famous moments in past debates that changed the outcome of those elections? Well, they didn’t.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2012/ten_miles_square/do_presidential_debates_really039413.php

Why the debates probably won’t matter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/why-the-debates-probably-wont-matter/2012/10/03/7d2b4ee4-0cca-11e2-97a7-45c05ef136b2_blog.html

What if the presidential debates don’t matter?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/28/what-if-the-presidential-debates-dont-matter/

[Edited on October 8, 2012 at 3:30 PM. Reason : .]

10/8/2012 3:29:23 PM

Quote :

"Something like 2/3s of people who identify as independents these days are really just Republicans who no longer want to be associated with the crazies and statists that have taken over their party. IINOs if you will."

Shit, I'll buy that. That's pretty much me.

10/8/2012 4:23:38 PM