Author: Robert I. Grundfest

I am a teacher, writer, voice-over artist and rationally opinionated observer of American and international society. While my job is to entertain and engage, my purpose is always to start a conversation.

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Politics

Would You Buy A Used Car From This Party?

In February, I sounded the warning. Twice. But, evidently, there are still people out there who either haven’t heard the news or don’t want to believe it.

The Republican Party is headed for a terrible crash that will weaken its influence and lead to a reassessment of its platform and direction. We’re already seeing the evidence, from Mitt Romney‘s comments on the 47% and his contention that Palestinians don’t want peace, to Todd Akin’s ignorant rant about rape victims and all of the other far right conspiracy theories about Obama being a Muslim, a socialist and unqualified to be president because he’s not a citizen. These ideas have not gone away, nor have they been submerged for the good of the Romney/Ryan ticket.

Now the GOP is running a campaign that says that they have the solutions to our nation’s problems. But why should we trust them? They’ve been wrong on every major issue over the past four years.

Consider the following Republican pronouncements:

Stimulus will cause inflation.

The Supreme Court will find the health care law unconstitutional.

Cutting taxes for the wealthy will result in economic expansion.

The polls are wrong.
Really wrong.
Democrats do not win elections we say they won’t win.
Why aren’t you listening to us?

Isn’t it amusing that the party of anti-science would be so concerned about the science of polling?

Now comes word that the party of morality is considering jumping back in to the Akin Senate campaign in Missouri. Does their hypocrisy know no bounds? No wonder Obama’s polling bounce is due mostly to support from women.

This is a political party without defining principles other than irrational celebration of the individual at the expense of the community and a misplaced sense of right and wrong. It can’t end well, and it won’t.

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Categories
Politics

Obama’s Big Bouncy Bouncy

Remember the Super Ball (if you do, you’re old, but that’s OK)? The rubber and plastic ball that was wound so tightly that it bounced halfway to the moon when an eight-year-old threw it?

That’s how big a bounce Obama’s received since the Democratic National Convention ended three weeks ago. It’s astounding, and it’s driving the Romney campaign crazy.

 

Scores of polls released since the DNC overwhelmingly show President Obama leading nationally and in the swing states that will decide this election. Republicans and some independent polling analysts are questioning the results of those polls, stating emphatically that they overstate Democratic participation and assume that the 2012 electorate will look more like 2008 (more Democratic participation) than 2004 (fewer Democrats) or 2010 (many more Republicans, and Independents who voted Republican).

Still others say that polls are usually right given that they’re aggregated from a variety of sources, such as the Real Clear Politics Index, and that changes in the electorate, whether pollsters call cell phones or use Internet-only methods, and the effects of early voting laws make polling an inexact science at best. Watch where the candidates spend their money and you’ll get a sense of where the races are the tightest, they say, and will be based on candidates’ internal polling. Right now that’s in Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia where the two campaigns are running thousands of TV spots per day in an attempt to either away voters or destroy their brain cells. It’s difficult to tell. Even here, it seems, the Obama camp has an edge, though Republican PAC money will surely change the equation soon.

At this point in the campaign, and polls can only give us a snapshot of this moment in time, President Obama has gained traction and has expanded his lead in the race. Part of that is his convention bounce, part of it is Democrats more firmly committing to his campaign, and part of it is reaction to Mitt Romney’s 47% comment that has cost him the support of some independent voters. Obama is polling at or above 50% in many of the swing states while Romney is polling in a narrow range of between 44 and 47%. This has to concern Republicans because 47% is where John McCain ended up four years ago. And Romney has not led in any of the swing states save for North Carolina in quite some time.

Next Wednesday’s debate will be Romney’s last, best hope to turn this election around. He’ll need to show a side of him that voters have not seen in order to convince the undecideds that he’s the answer to the nation’s problems. The President does have weaknesses on the deficit, unemployment and unrest in the Middle East. And word is that Obama is not preparing for the debates as thoroughly as Romney, which has to make the Republicans hopeful.

But Romney not only has to improve, he’s got to make up ground lost due to his own missteps. That will be a tall order.

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Categories
Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

The Issue With Issues

Remember when Paul Ryan’s selection meant that the 2012 campaign was going to be about issues? Like the “Scott Brown Means the End of Healthcare” and “The Supreme Court Will End Obamacare” narratives, this one also might turn out to be wrong. So far this is a campaign about Mitt Romney tripping over his own tongue and Paul Ryan trying to sweep it up from the floor. At some point, though, Mitt will stop saying destructive things and President Obama will need to confront the economy, so this race has some tread on it going forward. Given the polls, though, Romney had better step hard on the gas, and soon.

The Medicare debate does not seem to be hurting Romney in Florida, at least according to the latest poll from the Miami Herald. That’s good news for the Republicans. The problem is that they’re not saying exactly how they would pay for those over 55 to stay on traditional Medicare while weaning those younger onto a voucher system (a teat of a different size?). Perhaps the elderly voters have already internalized that they wouldn’t be touched by the Romney/Ryan plan, so why oppose it? Those who would fall into the voucher zone have plenty of reason to be nervous, suspicious and demanding of details. I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is the same team that says they aren’t going to tell us what taxes they’re going to cut until they get elected. If the polls are correct, that could be years from now.

The economy, which was supposed to be the downfall of the president, doesn’t seem to be hurting him at this point, but there’s still time for the GOP to highlight it every day and remind people about the unemployment rate and the deficit. Mitt’s 47% comments didn’t help him and several polls have shown that Americans now say that Obama would be the better candidate when it comes to fixing our economic house. This is a huge turnaround since the spring and, with women and more enthusiastic Democrats, is providing him with the polling bump he’s received since the Democratic National Convention. Keep in mind that there are two more employment reports to be released between now and election day, so the danger isn’t past for Obama. But now a plurality of voters think that Mitt Romney is an out-of-touch rich guy who can’t be trusted on jobs, so he has his work cut out for him if he hopes to catch up.

Neither party has highlighted the old standby social issues of abortion, marriage equality and prayer in schools, so we’ve been spared the usual fights over who’s more moral. Part of that, I think is that the GOP understands that most young people don’t want to fight those fights and most older people have already staked their territory on those issues. Whatever the reason, it’s good news.

The presidential debates are next week and I’m sure we’ll get an earful on the issues from both candidates. The conventional wisdom says that debate gaffes, missteps or forceful performances will affect people’s votes. The research says that’s not really true. That’s not good news for Romney, who is behind in the key swing states and needs a defining moment to build upon for the final six weeks of the campaign.

With most voters having made up their minds, and with a small slice of independents still on the fence, this election could turn on a mistake by either candidate, so look for them to play it safe and stick to well-worn scripts. It’s not the most interesting way to conduct a campaign, but it’s the system we have.

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Mitt Romney Politics

The Passion of the Mitt

Really, all that’s missing is the thorny crown. Mitt Romney all but threw himself under the bus this past week as he attempted to show his conservative bona-fides. The problem is that right-wing Mitt hasn’t quite reconciled with moderate Mitt. The result is a political dissonance not seen since Sarah Palin looked out her front window and saw Russia. It’s embarrassing, and it’s going to cost Romney the election.

Of course, I’m not talking about the 53% of Americans he identified by omission as hard-working people who take not a whit of government money, including Social Security, public pensions or tax credits. These people built it by themselves and if it wasn’t for those Cheatin’ Chinese, we’d be out of the economic doldrums and on our way towards prosperity.

What I’d like to know is why the 53% aren’t showing up in polls for Romney? In the latest national polls, Romney has 45, 43, 46, 45, 46 and 47 (in a Rasmussen poll where he actually leads Obama by two) percent of the vote. The latest NBC/WSJ poll has him losing by 50-45%. If the 47% are in the tank for Obama, that should leave plenty of room for a majority in Romney’s corner. It isn’t happening yet. And time is running out quickly.

What Mitt’s comments about the moochers who support Obama and his disastrous ruminations on the violence in the Middle East have done is to divert precious moments away from his central attacks on the president’s economic record. And Medicare (does anybody remember Medicare? This is an election about Medicare.) And the deficit. And any other substantive issue that Romney/Ryan believed was going to win them the hearts and minds of American voters with valid picture ID’s everywhere. The Republicans have lost days in the maelström of media-driven narratives and have tripped over their own tongues. And all Obama has had to do is to get out of the way, gracefully, and let them fail.

This election is by no means over. The first debate is October 3, and that presents Mitt the absolute last chance to reset himself and present his arguments to the electorate. The problem is that research shows that the debates do more to solidify the state of the race as it exists prior to the debates than they actually change minds. Plus, many people are just now tuning in to the election and they could decide that Obama has had his chance and he didn’t deliver. Stranger things have happened.

But even stranger things have already happened in this campaign. And they’ve all happened to Mitt.

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Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

It’s Raining Polls

The Democratic Nation Convention is a dot in the campaign’s rear-view mirror, but the shift in public sentiment it engendered is now embedded in the polling numbers. And that’s not good news for Mitt Romney.

The one bright spot for Mitt’s campaign is in North Carolina, where a Rasmussen poll has him leading by 51-45%. This is a firm enough pick-up for the GOP that the Obama campaign will probably not contest the state too vigorously because there are other states that need their attention.

Most of the other state polling over the last week shows the president with small leads in some of the swing states and solid leads where he needs to have them, most notably in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where the conservative groups supporting Romney have pulled their advertising, and New Jersey where, despite Chris Christie’s best efforts, Romney is behind by double digits. Those states, though, were always considered nice switches if the election was going to swing hard against Obama and Romney was going to win in landslide, a scenario not out of the question last spring when the economy and momentum were on Mitt’s side. After a summer in which Obama ran a textbook incumbent’s campaign (define your opponent negatively, change the topic from the economy, force Mitt further to the right), the big Republican win seems to be fading. Romney can certainly pull this election out, but he’ll need to go a different route than the 44 state rout he was thinking about.

In the states where the election will turn, the latest polls show a virtual dead heat. Obama leads by one point in a Rasmussen Virginia poll and by one in Colorado according to a Denver Post/SUSA survey. In Florida, and NBC/WSJ/Marist poll has Obama leading by 49-44%, but the poll overstates Democratic participation so the actual results are probably closer than five points. Both Rasmussen and ARG show one point leads for Obama in Ohio and UNH/WMUR sees Obama with a five point lead in New Hampshire. If Romney can carry Ohio, Florida and Colorado, he’d be within two Electoral Votes of the presidency and could win with any one of New Hampshire or Virginia. This is a tall order, but this is where both he and Obama will be spending the most money and time over the next seven weeks.

The main focus for the next few days, though, will be on Wisconsin, a state that hasn’t been polled since the DNC. With native son Paul Ryan on the national ticket, a poll-leading Republican, Tommy Thompson, atop the Senate ballot and a Republican governor at the helm, Wisconsin has been trending red for the past two years. The Romney campaign is putting a good deal of money into the state and a win there would be a huge pickup. In fact, a Romney win in Wisconsin could mean that Ohio follows suit. That would obviate the need for Mitt to win Colorado. It’s big. Perhaps we’ll get some numbers this week.

The national polls show an Obama bounce that has faded somewhat, though the Rasmussen tracking poll had Romney ahead by four early in the week and now shows his lead cut in half. Gallup has shown a pretty consistent Obama lead throughout the last 10 days. National polls by the New York Times, ABCNews and NBC/WSJ show an Obama lead, but they all overpolled Democrats in their surveys. I at least will need some further confirmation from more realistic internals to make a judgement about the national race. We know it’s close, but we don’t know just how close it is.

With foreign policy grabbing the headlines this week, the Romney campaign hopes to undermine the president’s policies while continuing to attack him on the slow economy. That Mitt’s comments on the Middle East unrest were seen as political opportunism will not help him, but if further events lead to more instability, he could correct himself and gain the high ground. Obama has probably built up enough of a lead in the foreign arena to survive, but more problems are clearly not what he wants. The president’s campaign has to figure that any day Romney is not talking about the economy, he’s losing ground. We’ll see what happens this week.

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Categories
Domestic Policies

Are You Better Off? If Not, Blame the GOP

Do Republicans really want to ask this question? Does the party whose policies are most responsible for blowing up the United States economy really want to ask if we’re better off now than four years ago, when the country faced an imminent destruction of its banking system and a possible depression? Do the GOP governors who implemented policies that devastated the public sector and led to hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other essential government services workers being laid off or forced to take pay cuts truly want the country to debate their actions?

And most important, does the party of the wealthy really want to ask a question that so panders to people’s craven self-interests, that it firmly establishes the GOP as the vanguard of selfishness and regression?

Why, yes it does, thank you very much. And that’s why this is such a dangerous moment in the campaign.

The Republicans think they actually have a winning issue here, but they don’t. Today, we have more jobs than we did four years ago. The stock market is higher, the housing market is beginning to recover and incomes are on the rise (though they are rising faster for Romney’s class than they are for your average middle class worker). It is true that the Obama team underestimated just how much damage the Bush Administration did to the economy and they should have asked for more direct stimulus and fewer tax cuts in the 2009 bill, but Republican obstruction and the debt-defying game of Russian Roulette they played that resulted in the country’s credit rating downgrade were prime contributors to the slow growth we find ourselves with today.

But this all pales in comparison to the devastation of the good public sector jobs that formed the backbone of many middle class communities. In New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states, GOP governors weakened or destroyed collective bargaining rights and imposed harsh wage controls, leading to layoffs and downsizing of essential workers. And as for craven self-interest, no, I am not better off because of it. Is it any wonder that New Jersey has an unemployment rate of 9.8%?

Democrats and the Obama campaign must forcefully fight back against this ridiculous misrepresentation of reality. That they initially gave scattered answers is mystifying, but a unified response during the convention can go a long way towards laying this lie to rest.

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Categories
New Jersey Politics teachers

New Jersey’s Teachers: The Envy of the Nation

And I ain’t makin’ that up, neither.

In honor of back-to-school time here in the Garden State (I know that schools in other states might have started in August), it’s time for us to recognize the unparalleled job that New Jersey’s public school teachers do year in and year out.

We consistently rank in the top 3 nationwide in student outcomes on most available measures; SAT, AP and NAEP scores, college acceptances (too many graduates go out-of-state, though), writing achievement and overall performance. We have some significant gaps between how suburban students perform and how their urban counterparts score, and that is a sore point both economically and politically.

But even with that huge caveat, we are the envy of other states. How do I know? Because this past July I attended the National Education Association convention in Washington, D.C., and many of my colleagues around the country told me so.

I spoke with delegates from Tennessee, and they told me that their statewide tests dictated their curriculum to the point that they had to jettison most enrichment material from their classrooms to make sure they covered the test material. They also said that for the two months before the tests, they did nothing but review and drill.

And just in case you think this is professional bias, I sat next to a family from Tennessee on the train down to DC, and their daughter, a high school senior from a town near Nashville, told me how ridiculous (her word) the tests were and how they made the teachers stop teaching fun stuff (her words) and worry about the tests. Her parents seconded her remarks, then went out of the way to tell me that they were Republicans, but didn’t agree with Governor Christie’s attempts to impose a Tennessee solution on New Jersey. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you look them in the eye and just listen to what they say.

Anyway, when I told the Tennessee teachers where I was from, they told me that they loved the NJEA because it had a backbone and stood up, as much as it could, to the governor.

I got the same treatment from Idaho. The president of the Idaho Education Association also professed admiration for New Jersey’s public school teachers because she said that Idaho was moving towards a state salary system and that the state had appropriated money that should have gone to teacher’s salaries to pay for a misguided technology venture that has no research behind it. I asked if the teachers had any say in the decision, and of course the answer was no. So much for professional respect.

From California’s delegation, I heard the most distressing stories of administrative overreach, even to the point where an entire elementary school’s faculty was being replaced because two teachers were accused of lewd acts with students. The administration’s rationale? “We don’t want any more surprises.” I am not condoning anything the accused teachers might have done, but where are the due process protections promised to teachers as citizens of the United States? As I spoke to the California delegates about these and other occurrences, they said they thought that this could not happen in New Jersey because of its strong association. I certainly hope so.

Other teachers I spoke with consistently said the same things about New Jersey once I identified myself from the state: They admired and respected the NJEA for standing up for member’s rights in a state where teachers still have strong protections and a unified membership. Even the new tenure law, signed by Christie in the dog days of August, keeps due process and tenure protections for all teachers who earn it, even as it takes longer to procure and streamlines the process of firing a teacher who doesn’t meet local standards.

So as we begin another school year, I am proud to say that I am a New Jersey public school teacher.
I am proud to say that I am committed to educating children and young adults so they can become productive members of society. And I am proud to be a member of NJEA, an organization that has a national reputation as one that fosters a pro-education ethic, and one that has the best interests of its members at heart.

I’ve focused primarily on public schools here, but it’s been my pleasure and honor to have worked in private schools and to have trained teachers who work in a wide variety of educational settings. Colleagues, remember that we do one of the most important paid jobs in the country. We have earned honor and respect and we show it through our deeds and actions. Have a great school year.

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Categories
Politics Republican

Abraham, Isaac and Mitt: The GOP Hurricane Heads Towards Shore

In February I wrote that the conservative wave would crash this year. I even upgraded the warning to a tsunami, and told people to get the hell off the beach. So it couldn’t be any more appropriate for a hurricane to be arriving in Tampa just as the Republican Party is gathering for its national convention. It’s even more appropriate for said hurricane to be named Isaac, after the biblical character whose father, Abraham, has to prove his fealty to the Almighty by killing his son. The GOP is all about fealty. And sacrifice. And going to the edge of the abyss before pulling back (remember that said Almighty stops Abraham just as he’s about to plunge a dagger into a bound and compliant Isaac). The story of Abraham and Isaac is just too perfect for our times, but the GOP has forgotten its lesson.

Yes, folks, this is the modern day Republican Party. It’s fractious, extreme, uncompromising and biblical. It relies on the fear of change while also proposing some of the most far-reaching and radical changes this country has ever seen. It wants to deny people their equal rights, bind women to their men, sacrifice the poor so that the rich can have their tax cuts and proclaim itself libertarian while telling you what you can do in the privacy of your home and bedroom. It has questioned the legitimacy of our sitting president and has demonized anyone who doesn’t agree with its policies as un-American, anti-American, and foreign.

It’s not enough to say that this isn’t your father’s Republican Party. This isn’t even Abraham’s Republican Party.

With a party platform that would deny marriage equality, outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and boil health care down to a policy that essentially says lose weight (hello keynote speaker!), the Republicans will gather under a far-right banner that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have draped himself in 5 years ago. The father of the nation’s health care law now has to run away from it faster than Usain Bolt because the rest of the party doesn’t like the idea that until 4 years ago was a Republican talking point.

His running mate, Paul Ryan, is a poster child of the new right and the man who single-handedly turned the election from being about jobs and the economy, which is where Romney needed it to be, into a tutorial on why we need social programs like Medicare, Social Security and food stamps. The Republicans will remind anyone who listens that now is not the time to raise taxes on anyone, but they seem to believe that it’s high time we cut those darned benefits that feed, educate and clothe children, and keep them under dry rooves (yes, I said rooves).

I truly hope that nobody gets hurt as a result of the storm heading towards Tampa. The problem is that many people will get hurt because of the Republican agenda. It’s a perfect storm of greed, intolerance and uncompromising radicalism. Forget the beach; it’s time to move to the high ground, and fast.

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Mitt Romney Paul Ryan Politics

The Ryan Bounce

It’s been more than a week since Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate, which is enough time to determine the extent of any bounce in the polls. At this point, the answer is that Ryan has helped in part, but it remains to be seen if he provides a more lasting upward movement in Romney’s numbers.

Last week, Mark Blumenthal of Huffington Post/Pollster wrote that the polls weren’t showing much of a bounce, perhaps 1 or 2 percentage points towards Romney, but most of the gains were within the poll’s margin of error and that President Obama had gained in some polls after the announcement. Nate Silver weighed in on the Romney bounce in the polls and the Intrade markets, and was unimpressed, but he did note that many of the trend lines in recent polls have moved in Romney’s direction. Stuart Rothenberg also wrote an interesting piece warning that party identification samples are key to deciphering polls and weighing their relative merits. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who watches and analyzes polls, but it will become even more important as pollsters move from registered voter samples to likely voter models after the party conventions.

The state polls that were released last week show better results for Romney than any perceived bounce from the Ryan announcement. The Purple Strategies polls from August 15 give Romney leads in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, and Obama the lead in Colorado. Recent polling in Virginia is showing promising news for the Romney campaign as he tries to cut into Obama’s perceived strength in the Washington suburbs.

From the article:

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, says the task for Romney is to put the “pieces of the puzzle” together: the Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Washington suburbs and exurbs, along with the rural regions of southwest Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, and Southside. “The rural areas are still 20 percent of the vote in Virginia,” Sabato says, and the people there are conservative. The difference this year is that Republicans in these parts of the state are more motivated than they were in 2008. Maximum turnout among rural Virginians could make all the difference.

If those results stood up until November, Romney would win the presidency and the Republicans would probably take the Senate.

There were a pair of Wisconsin polls, with Romney ahead in the Rasmussen survey and Obama ahead in a CNN poll. The big difference is that Rasmussen polled likely voters and CNN found registered voters, so in this case I would say that the addition of Paul Ryan has probably affected the race.  The president is ahead according to a Franklin & Marshall  poll of Pennsylvania (registered voters) by 47-42%, but that margin represents a reduction from 11 points the last time F & M polled, so the Romney campaign will probably look to put more resources into that state.

The national tracking polls don’t really show a sustained bounce for the GOP. Gallup now has Romney with a 2 point lead, which is up from a tie late last week, but the Rasmussen tracking poll shows Obama leading by 2. That represents a 6 point swing for the president who was down by 4 as late as last Wednesday.

In the end, the polling after Romney made the Ryan announcement has been mixed with some good news on the state front for Romney and a continued national lead for Obama. The Republican Convention provides our next opportunity to gauge the race and I would say that this is Romney’s biggest and best opportunity to introduce himself to the American people. If he does it well, he could see a 10 point bounce in the polls. Anything more would be gravy, but anything less would be seen as disappointing. In addition, unemployment figures will be released not long after the Democrats close their convention, and we know how both campaigns will use those numbers.

Enjoy the August doldrums. The excitement lies ahead.

Categories
Mitt Romney Paul Ryan Politics Sarah Palin

Confessions Of A VP Voyeur

Sarah Palin scared the crap out of me. Paul Ryan? Not so much.

When John McCain announced that he was choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, I got a cold shiver down my spine. Not the same cold shiver I got two or three weeks later when it became clear that Governor Palin’s talking alone created a threat to our national and educational security, but a cold shiver that entertained the idea that these two could win the White House. And let’s be fair: Sarah Palin was a “fresh face,” she was “energetic,” she was a “woman,” (okay, lol. No quotations needed for that last one…), she could energize a crowd and she was very darned compelling. Next to her, Barack Obama looked plodding and dull. I thought the race was over.

We all know how that worked out, and America is a stronger country because of it.

All of this came back to mind over the past few days after Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate. My reaction? Very little emotion. I didn’t feel threatened. I wasn’t scared. None of that adrenalin fueled fear I had in 2008. Nope, Paul Ryan does not scare me in the least. And that’s interesting because Ryan has a wealth of ideas and proposals and serious thoughts that would never take an overnight in Sarah Palin’s amygdala.

I searched a bit deeper, and this is what I found.

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are too much alike. When they stand together, they look like the corporate jerks who sent your job to Hyderabad and your health care to the local EmergiCenter. They even talk that way. I always admired how the GOP could take an image and make it work on television, but they’ve come a cropper this time. Looking at Romney-Ryan is not a compelling visual. As a matter of fact, it’s a bit boring.

The press narrative so far is that Mitt chose someone as a counterweight to his emerging image as a gaffe prone slice of white American cheese, but that’s exactly what Mitt didn’t need. He needed to move towards the center of the political spectrum with a politician who didn’t threaten the middle. Ryan looks the part of the counterweight, but his ideas are easily packaged as a scary, program-cutting menace who will throw your grandma under select vehicles that, at this point, you can’t afford anyway. And that’s exactly how the Obama campaign is playing it.

The other thing is that I don’t get the sense that the excitement over Romney’s choice will last very long. He’s already running away from Ryan’s budget, making the questionable assumption that his 59-point economic plan is somehow a better political plank than the reason he chose Ryan in the first place. Ryan is a darling of the far right, but not of the middle or independents. To win them over he’s got to move beyond deficit reduction to something the middle can grab hold of, but neither Romney nor Ryan has that. They have a bad economy, high unemployment and hatred of Obama on their right flank. They have to promise a vision of the country that’s better than what we have now. Cutting Medicare while saving every weapons program and keeping tax cuts for the wealthy is not the way to do that. The right-wing will vote for Mitt anyway, so he really didn’t need Ryan to shore up the base. What he will need is more independent voters in Florida and Ohio. I don’t think he gets them with Ryan.

In the end, voters want to know what’s in it for them. They say they want deficit reduction, but what they really want is a job and a home and a decent neighborhood school. Romney-Ryan has the opportunity to make the case for that, but it will be difficult because that’s not the evolving national conversation. President Obama has run a terrific campaign so far keeping Romney on his heels and controlling the message. Romney can try to change that message, but his choice of Ryan now limits, rather than expands, his choice of subjects. Just as Mitt is being defined as the rich guy, Ryan will be known as the cut Medicare guy. That’s not a winner.

And that’s why I’m not afraid of Paul Ryan.

(But Sarah Palin still scares the crap out of me.)

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Categories
Politics

Vanilla Thunder: Mitt Makes the Bold Choice

So which is it? Did Mitt Romney make the VP pick that Barack Obama wanted? Or is this Romney being Reagan? Should Democrats be giddy at the Paul Ryan pick or should smart Democrats (which includes all of us, by the way) be worried? Was Ryan the only logical pick for an election that will hinge on economic policy? Or was this pick an admission of fear from the Romney campaign?

At the very least, it’s a good thing nobody said that a looker like Ryan will attract the women’s vote (see Quayle, Dan). Perhaps that’s the next story. On to the analysis.

First of all, there has been some polling on Paul Ryan, and the results are clearly mixed. The most recent, from August 7 and 8 of this year, shows that 54% of Americans have never heard of the guy. Turns out, they were probably paying attention to their lives, jobs, hobbies, successes and problems, and not to some good-looking guy from Wisconsin who wants the government to mess with their Medicare and Social Security. Of those who had heard of him, 27% had a favorable view of Ryan.

Reaction to his economic plan though, tells a different story. From the article:

However, some media pollsters asked about the substance of the plan and found net negative reactions among those willing to venture an opinion. In June 2011, for example, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll posed the following question to Americans:

There is currently a proposal to change how Medicare would work so seniors being enrolled in the program ten years from now would be given a guaranteed payment called a voucher from the federal government to purchase a Medicare approved coverage plan from a private health insurance company. Do you think this is a good idea, a bad idea, or do you not know enough about this to have an opinion at this time?

Although nearly half said they had no opinion or were unsure (47 percent), more considered it a bad idea (31 percent) than a good one (22 percent).

Other polls and analysehttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Vanilla%20Thunders, such as this from Nate Silver, tell a similar story.

It’s going to take some time before we can reliably measure the impact of Mr. Romney’s choice. Vice-presidential picks sometimes produce “bounces” in the polls, especially when they are as newsworthy as this one, but they often fade after a few days or a few weeks. And the party conventions, which almost always produce polling bounces, are coming up soon.

I think there are other “bold” picks that Mr. Romney could have made — Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, for instance, or Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey or Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada — where the balance of risk and reward would have been a little better. Some of these candidates, especially Mr. Rubio and Mr. Christie, would also have excited the Republican base. But they might also have had a more natural appeal to independent voters, and to demographic groups that Mr. Romney is struggling to win over.

That last line is key. Romney is trailing in most polls and needs to lock down independent voters, who voted for Obama in 2008, in critical swing states. Paul Ryan is not a safe choice for that task. He’s a lightning rod and a true believer. Romney-Ryan now face the difficult task of not only convincing voters that they will do better on the economy, but must also sell voters on the farthest of right-wing proposals in order to accomplish the task. And that includes giving up cherished entitlements that most people rely on in good times and bad. The GOP won huge majorities in the House of Representatives and statehouses in 2010 by running against President Obama’s Medicare adjustments. Ryan’s plan includes severe cuts and changes to Medicare. Do the Republicans think they can win Florida with that plan? Good luck.

Of course, not all is rosy on the budget attack front. Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden is firmly behind the Ryan Medicare plan, and that could complicate the Obama campaign’s message. In the end, Obama will bet that most people don’t know and don’t care who Ron Wyden is, and I would agree with that assessment. I also seem to remember that one of the Republican candidates supported a health care program similar to Obama’s. Forget his name, though. It’ll come to me.

The funniest idea I’ve seen on the Ryan pick is that Republicans are now saying that this campaign will finally focus on the issues. And I thought the Democrats were the party of naive idealism.

This campaign has been fought on Barack Obama’s terms so far and the Romney campaign has done little but to be defensive and slow. If the race is going to be fought on ideas, it will mean that Romney-Ryan has taken control of the debate and is driving the daily message. That will be a feat. It’s certainly doable and Mitt has about two weeks, through the GOP convention and a couple of days afterward, to change the shape of the campaign. I have my doubts. After all, Obama is running anti-Ryan ads now and he’s not going to stop until election day. He’s a Chicago brawler and the GOP is underestimating his tenacity if they think he’s going to let niceness (or facts, in some cases), get in the way.

The polls will give us a sense of how the race is moving, and the effects of the Ryan bounce, by Wednesday or Thursday. As of today, the Gallup (46-46%) and Rasmussen (Romney 46-44%) tracking polls are close and the overall RealClearPolitics Index has Obama with a 48-43.4 lead.

This is the first touchstone of the campaign and one that the Romney camp badly needs to move the needle. Let’s see what happens.

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Politics

President Obama Over 50% in New Polls

A few new polls over the past couple of days continue to indicate a close race nationally and an increasing lead for president Obama in many of the key swing states. Mitt Romney has had a rocky week stemming from his overseas trip, where gaffes, not policy, became the main story.

The main headline poll from today comes courtesy of Quinnipiac/The New York Times/CBS News and shows Obama with leads in Florida (51-45%), Ohio (50-44%), and Pennsylvania (53-42%). The poll was of likely voters and was conducted during the last week of July.

On balance, the poll results are good news for the Obama campaign, which has faced rather dismal economic numbers and the president’s negative approval ratings. Most Americans polled also say that the country is on the wrong track.

So why is Obama still ahead? Much has been made of the likeability factor and the political ads that the Obama campaign has been running in the swing states that are savaging Romney’s business experience and his decision not to release more than two year of tax returns. These are not necessarily the kinds of issues that win or lose elections, but they are successful tools in defining an opponent who has not yet defined himself. Once the conventions are over and the real campaigning starts, the side issues will probably fade and Romney’s disparaging of the London Olympics will go the way of his wife’s Cadillacs and the size of trees in Michigan. Obama will have to defend an economy that is barely growing and a growing sense that perhaps the United States needs a new direction.

This poll’s party breakdown is solid in Florida, slightly favors Democrats in Ohio and undercounts Democrats in Pennsylvania, so the Ohio numbers might be overstated, but the other state figures are probably as reliable as a 95% confidence rate can establish.

For example, Q/NYT/CBS has party affiliation in Florida as D 42/R 36/I 20 while the latest figures from Florida show a D 41/R 36/I 23. Pretty good.

In Ohio, the poll has D 42/R 35/I 20 while the actual breakdown is D 36/R 37/I 27, so there’s a bit of a Democratic overstatement.

In Pennsylvania, the poll has D 46/R 40/I 11 and the actual voter registration shows D 51/R 37/I 12. This undercounts Democrats and overcounts Republicans, meaning that if Romney wants to win here, he’ll need a more concerted effort. It’s not out of the question, but time is of the essence.

In all three states, Barack Obama’s favorable ratings are in the low 50’s, while Romney’s are in the high 30s and low 40s. Florida and Pennsylvania voters say that their state’s economy is getting worse, while Ohio voters say theirs is getting better (which it is, statistically).

The complete results are here.

Another poll, this time out of Michigan (EPIC-MRA for the Detroit Free Press), shows the president ahead of Romney by 48-42%, a result that is in line with other pollsters, notably Rasmussen, and seems to suggest that Michigan will stay blue this year. As is the case with most state polls, the fact that Obama is running at under 50% in a reelection year has to concern him, especially since he’s been running hard on his saving Detroit’s automobile industry. The issue with this poll is that it doesn’t have any breakdowns associated with it, so it’s difficult to assess how accurate the methods and results are. That it mirrors other recent Michigan polls is helpful, but it would be nice to see some internal numbers.

The best news for Romney comes from Arizona, where a new PPP Poll has him ahead 52-41%, and a Rasmussen Poll of Missouri showing Mitt with a 50-44% lead.

We are fast approaching events which will have more profound effects on the race, with Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, the GOP Convention later this month and the Democratic Convention in September. It will be interesting to see how these affect the race. I suspect that Romney will gain enough of a bounce to make the swing states more competitive.

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