Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[puterbac]

Three polls in Ohio released today:

Rasmussen: TIE
SurveyUSA: Obama +3
Time Mag: Obama +5

Also two in Nevada:

Rasmussen: Obama +2
PPP: Obama +4

Romney's lead in the wild Gallup poll has dropped from +7 to +3. Pretty steady in Rasmussen at +4. Rasmussen hinting that the lead could drop.

Time samples d about 11% mor than r. Mu really think its gonna be like that?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Prob not. The last three elections have all been within 5 points

[Dr. Strangelove]

Puter- I checked Rasmussen's state poll in Ohio from 2004 and 2008. In both years, Rasmussen predicted a better showing from the Republican than the actual result.

2004: the last Rasmussen poll showed Bush with a +4 edge over Kerry. Bush's actual margin was about +2.

2008: the last Rasmussen poll showed the race in a TIE. Obama carried the state by +4.6

Rasmussen might have the best national poll, but doesn't necessarily mean they are the best in every state.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... a-400.html

[innocentbystander]

Puter- I checked Rasmussen's state poll in Ohio from 2004 and 2008. In both years, Rasmussen predicted a better showing from the Republican than the actual result.

2004: the last Rasmussen poll showed Bush with a +4 edge over Kerry. Bush's actual margin was about +2.

2008: the last Rasmussen poll showed the race in a TIE. Obama carried the state by +4.6

Rasmussen might have the best national poll, but doesn't necessarily mean they are the best in every state.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... a-400.html

Dr Strangelove, if you are an Ohio resident, I'm asking you (politely, as one fan of 1970's Anime to another) to vote for Romney. Please. That would be the correct thing to do. From another blog that I frequently visit:

Romney was the perfect candidate for this election. He is a straight-laced, old school looking/sounding get things done type of candidate, with a significant record both in and out of government. We needed the opposite of Obama's hope and change hokus pokus charisma, and we got it. We did not need the conservative version of Obama - a slick, used car salesman, tea party type who is just offering the same crap Obama offered in 2008, just from the conservative prospective.

In sports, when a team fires a manager/HC, they look for the next one to be the opposite type (god willing this happens at the Heights). The country needs the same. The dissatisfaction with Obama is best played by offering the opposite - a stuffy, older, results oriented problem solver who is not afraid of being a dick when necessary - in short, a real adult. This type of counter-offer plays better than just offering the same shit, but with a tea party agenda.

The smart republicans who backed Romney all along knew that to win we needed to flip some Obama voters. You don't do that with whack jobs like Bachman, or even Perry. You do that by saying its time to bring in a real adult - someone who isn't as cool or hip, or isn't necessarily inspiring, but someone who knows how to run shit as diverse as a liberal state and a Midwestern Winter Olympic Games. This is why Obamas summer long attacks on him didn't do shit - we kinda need the dick that ran Bain for a profit. In order to fix our fiscal mess, we need someone who is going to step on some toes, and someone who knows how to say no. What Romney did at Bain is a plus in my book. I hope he does the same with the federal budget.

And if you are an Ohio resident and you just can't vote for Romney (for whatever reason, and I don't care what that reason is) then please, just don't vote to re-elect this President. I know President Obama means well, I'm sure he does. And by all accounts he is a decent man, a good father and husband, but he way over his head as our President. He shouldn't have been elected in the first place and the whole world is much worse off because of it.

[10ac]

Will the bed wetters riot if the Mormon beats the Muslim?

[Jungle Rat]

Ohio will do what I tell it to do.

[Owlman]

A footnote about Arizona is in order though. Last Thursday, Richard Carmona (D) and Jeff Flake debated and things got pretty heated. At one point the moderator, Brahm Resnik, said: "Now I know how Candy Crowley felt." Carmona shot back: "You're prettier than her." Bad move. Many women are going to see that as an insult to Crowley, who was put on the stage not because she is a model but because she is a very experienced journalist. Making it worse for Carmona is that right-wing blogs have said Crowley is too fat to moderate a debate, as if her weight had something to do with her political skills. By making this flippant remark though, Carmona may have had his "macaca" moment and blown an otherwise winnable race.

[Toemeesleather]

...desperate....

[Owlman]

not desperate, stupid. Carmona had a narrow lead according to most leagues. This is the type of thing that will give the victory to Flake, the Republican, at this late date.

[puterbac]

Ahhh Chicago politics at its best...

Polling machines in NC are defaulting to Oprama...

UPDATE: Chairman of FL Republican Party receives bogus voting letter as hoax spreads; FBI investigating...

Video snags Dem boss in vote fraud... http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/video-captur ... ote-fraud/

Son resigns... http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-575 ... aud-video/

So far two different Dems caught talking about voter fraud and how to do it. Tell me again why we don't need voter ID laws?

[THE_WIZARD_]

Same old Democrat Party...

[THE_WIZARD_]

[10ac]

Heh. And I was just reading some posts from the bedwetters whining about the mean ole GOP thugs wanting the voters to ID themselves.

[Professor Tiger]

Even zombies have no problem presenting ID to vote.

They've been a vital part of the Dem coalition for generations in Illinois.

[bluetick]

IB is correct -Romney was the only R on the slate who could beat oprama. To the party's credit, they loaded the right guy in the chamber. Bachmann, Santorum, Perry etc.
...they would be roadkill by now and the election would already be a foregone conclusion.

[innocentbystander]

Will the bed wetters riot if the Mormon beats the Muslim?

Here is one of "the Muslim's" typical voters giving you some damn good reasons to re-elect this President.

http://www.caintv.com/NewObamaadTrytoim ... slikel-636

Isn't she just so.... charming. If I was her father, I would be like... sooooo proud of my little girl.

[hedge]

Too bad she's not your daughter. If she was you'd be dead by now...

[Toemeesleather]

Things are reeeaaaalllly getting serious now. Say it again!!!


Romneysia!!!111lll

[puterbac]

DECLARATIONS Updated October 25, 2012, 7:43 p.m. ET

Noonan: When Americans Saw the Real Obama

Why the Denver debate changed everything.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... #printMode

By PEGGY NOONAN

We all say Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. But it's all still Denver, Denver, and the mystery that maybe isn't a mystery at all.

If Cincinnati and Lake County go for Mitt Romney on Nov. 6 it will be because of what happened in Denver on Oct. 3. If Barack Obama barely scrapes through, if there's a bloody and prolonged recount, it too will be because of Denver.

Nothing echoes out like that debate. It was the moment that allowed Mr. Romney to break through, that allowed dismay with the incumbent to coalesce, that allowed voters to consider the alternative. What the debate did to the president is what the Yankees' 0-4 series against the Tigers did at least momentarily, to the team's relationship with their city. "Dear Yankees, We don't date losers. Signed, New Yorkers" read the Post's headline.

America doesn't date losers either.

Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. Americans had gotten used to him as The President. Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune.

What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn't afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.

But that's what he did.

And in some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors—they weren't there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor. He didn't have a teleprompter, and so his failure seemed to underscore the cliché that the prompter is a kind of umbilical cord for him, something that provides nourishment, the thing he needs to sound good. He is not by any means a stupid man but he has become a boring one; he drones, he is predictable, it's never new. The teleprompter adds substance, or at least safety.

***
A great and assumed question, the one that's still floating out there, is what exactly happened when Mr. Obama did himself in? What led to it?

Was it the catastrophic execution of an arguably sound strategy? Perhaps the idea was to show the president was so unimpressed by his challenger that he could coolly keep him at bay by not engaging. Maybe Mr. Obama's handlers advised: "The American people aren't impressed by this flip-flopping, outsourcing plutocrat, and you will deepen your bond with the American people, Mr. President, by expressing in your bearing, through your manner and language, how unimpressed you are, too." So he sat back and let Mr. Romney come forward. Mr. But Romney was poised, knowledgable, presidential. It was a mistake to let that come forward!

Was it the catastrophic execution of a truly bad strategy? Maybe they assumed the election was already pretty much in the bag, don't sweat it, just be your glitteringly brilliant self and let Duncan the Wonder Horse go out there and turn people off. But nothing was in the bag. The sheer number of people who watched—a historic 70 million—suggests a lot of voters were still making up their minds.

Maybe the president himself didn't think he could possibly be beaten because he's so beloved. Presidents are always given good news, to keep their spirits up. The poll numbers he'd been seeing, the get-out-the-vote reports, the extraordinary Internet effort to connect with every lonely person in America, which is a lot of persons—maybe everything he was hearing left him thinking his position was impregnable.

But maybe these questions are all off. Maybe what happened isn't a mystery at all.

That, anyway, is the view expressed this week by a member of the U.S. Senate who served there with Mr Obama and has met with him in the White House. People back home, he said, sometimes wonder what happened with the president in the debate. The senator said, I paraphrase: I sort of have to tell them that it wasn't a miscalculation or a weird moment. I tell them: I know him, and that was him. That guy on the stage, that's the real Obama.

***
Which gets us to Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics," published last month. The portrait it contains of Mr. Obama—of a president who is at once over his head, out of his depth and wholly unaware of the fact—hasn't received the attention it deserves. Throughout the book, which is a journalistic history of the president's key economic negotiations with Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama is portrayed as having the appearance and presentation of an academic or intellectual while being strangely clueless in his reading of political situations and dynamics. He is bad at negotiating—in fact doesn't know how. His confidence is consistently greater than his acumen, his arrogance greater than his grasp.

He misread his Republican opponents from day one. If he had been large-spirited and conciliatory he would have effectively undercut them, and kept them from uniting. (If he'd been large-spirited with Mr. Romney, he would have undercut him, too.) Instead he was toughly partisan, he shut them out, and positions hardened. In time Republicans came to think he doesn't really listen, doesn't really hear. So did some Democrats. Business leaders and mighty CEOs felt patronized: After inviting them to meet with him, the president read from a teleprompter and included the press. They felt like "window dressing." One spoke of Obama's surface polish and essential remoteness. In negotiation he did not cajole, seduce, muscle or win sympathy. He instructed. He claimed deep understanding of his adversaries and their motives but was often incorrect. He told staffers that John Boehner, one of 11 children of a small-town bar owner, was a "country club Republican." He was often patronizing, which in the old and accomplished is irritating but in the young and inexperienced is infuriating. "Boehner said he hated going down to the White House to listen to what amounted to presidential lectures," Mr. Woodward writes.

Mr. Obama's was a White House that had—and showed—no respect for Republicans trying to negotiate with Republicans. Through it all he was confident—"Eric, don't call my bluff"—because he believed, as did his staff, that his talents would save the day.

They saved nothing. Washington became immobilized.

Mr. Woodward's portrait of the president is not precisely new—it has been drawn in other ways in other accounts, and has been a staple of D.C. gossip for three years now—but it is vivid and believable. And there's probably a direct line between that portrait and the Obama seen in the first debate. Maybe that's what made it so indelible, and such an arc-changer.

People saw for the first time an Obama they may have heard about on radio or in a newspaper but had never seen.

They didn't see some odd version of the president. They saw the president.

And they didn't like what they saw, and that would linger.

[Toemeesleather]

Sorry Peg, most of us saw the real Obozo bout 4 yrs before you.