US Presidential Election 2012

[DCon]

Romney will be making his vote for me speech soon

Clint Eastwood rumoured to the surprise guest telling everyone to vote for Mitt

[Holly]

Only a businessman, experienced in making profits, can be a good President, according to Romney.

[Andrew49]

Romney will be making his vote for me speech soon

Clint Eastwood rumoured to the surprise guest telling everyone to vote for Mitt

Clint:rambled on and on and on ... got into a debate with an empty chair ... and lost LINK

My summary:

[Count Bobulescu]

The media fact checkers have been all over the Ryan speech pointing out inaccuracies by omission and commission. Here’s a good example.

Paul Ryan's speech was well-written, well- delivered, and well-received. All of that was evident to anyone watching on TV. It had a number of nice smilingly vicious hit lines -- starting with the masterful "staring up at the faded Obama posters" riff -- plus a note of encouraging uplift at the end.

It was also profoundly dishonest in ways large and small.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...speech/261775/

TAMPA — Did Paul Ryan bend the truth?
The verdict, rendered by a slew of media fact checkers, was immediate and unequivocal: In his first major speech before the American people, the Republican vice presidential nominee repeatedly left out key facts, ignored context and was blind to his own hypocrisy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...y.html?hpid=z3

[Count Bobulescu]

Four years ago 38 million people watched Obama accept the Democratic nomination. Last night just 21 million watched Romney.

VIEWERSHIP OFF FROM '08: "The Nielsen ratings company said an estimated 21.9 million people watched GOP convention coverage Wednesday night over nine networks. The marquee event was Ryan's acceptance speech as ... More than 40 million people watched Palin's acceptance speech at the 2008 convention. ... For the second night in a row, Fox News Channel had more viewers than anyone else covering the convention Wednesday. Fox had 7.7 million viewers during the 10 p.m. EDT hour, when all the networks were competing. NBC had 4.1 million, ABC 2.9 million, CBS 2.6 million, MSNBC 1.4 million and CNN 1.3 million.


In the immediate aftermath, the Romney speech was damned with faint praise. None of the neutral/objective commentators I heard appeared to want to say outright what I was thinking. It was a lousy speech poorly delivered, and don’t get me started on Clint Eastwood, stick to the movies buddy. Commentators say the Romney campaign is publicly defending Eastwood, but privately fuming at the waste of time. It is believed that Romney wrote most of the speech himself. If true, it augurs well for Obama in the debates.

WaPo Editorial Board.

But Mr. Romney mostly repeated his five rather vague priorities for fixing the economy, adding little meat to the gauziness of past declarations. There was nostalgia for an earlier era of greater American confidence, without much detail about how to achieve a restoration. Promising to begin his presidency “with a jobs tour” — and jabbing, inaccurately, at Mr. Obama for starting his with an “apology tour” — is not a substitute for a serious policy.
Mr. Romney presented himself more as an empathetic manager than an ideological visionary. He mocked Mr. Obama’s grand claims with a direct and appealing promise “to help you and your family.” But this was not a speech in which he demonstrated how he would do so. He made no mention of the tough love and hard budget choices that earlier convention speakers had touted as central to the Republican plan. His argument against Mr. Obama was stronger than his pitch for himself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...y.html?hpid=z3

KLEIN: Missing from the Romney speech was policy substance. “We heard precious little about Mitt Romney's plans for the country…Romney's speech spent 260 words. There was almost no mention — and absolutely no description — of his budget, tax, health care or Medicare plans…All in all, Romney's speech was...fine. I doubt he did himself any harm. And I'm sure he'll get some sort of a convention bump. But it felt like a missed opportunity for him to close the deal. The American people already know that they're not happy with the economy. Tonight was Romney's chance to persuade them that he has a better way. But his speech really didn't even try to do that.” Ezra Klein in The Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...wpisrc=nl_wonk


BROOKS: Romney and the Republicans envision a dynamic and striving America. “[T]oday's Republican Party unabashedly celebrates this ambition and definition of success…Speaker after speaker argued that this ideal of success is under assault by Democrats who look down on strivers, who undermine self-reliance with government dependency, who smother ambition under regulations…If you believe, as I do, that American institutions are hitting a creaky middle age, then you have a lot of time for this argument…On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted Democratic Party, which says: We don't have an agenda, but we really don't like theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.” David Brooks in The New York Times.


STRASSEL: Romney’s new strength, his boldness. “We’ve also learned that Mr. Romney can be unexpectedly bold, in ways that have gelled into a strong platform…One other area of boldness, largely unnoticed: Even before the Ryan pick, even before nonparty groups were out in force, the Romney campaign was taking an aggressive posture toward the electoral map…[Their] early bets may provide Mr. Romney some intriguing flexibility in the electoral-vote count…The unexpected courage Mr. Romney has shown in recent weeks in embracing Mr. Ryan and the big issues is the sort of daring he’ll need when facing the many small and large campaign decisions yet to come.” Kimberley A. Strassel in The Wall Street Journal.


SILVER: Romney’s generic speech. “The risk-taking Mitt Romney who picked Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate was not on display in Tampa on Thursday night. Instead, in accepting the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney delivered a mostly well-written and reasonably well-delivered speech -- but one that largely avoided policy substance or sweeping narrative, instead seeking to turn the election back into a referendum on President Obama…Instead, Mr. Romney's strategy was pretty clear. He was seeking to fulfill the role of the generic Republican -- a safe and unobjectionable alternative with a nice family and a nice career - and whose main credential is that he is not Mr. Obama, the Democratic president with tepid approval ratings and middling economic numbers. It may be a smart approach.” Nate Silver in The New York Times.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...wpisrc=nl_wonk

NOONAN: Romney is Mr. Adequate. “Mitt Romney’s speech? He had to achieve adequacy. He did. It was a speech that seemed assembled by people who love pictures but not words. And that will limit a speech. It could not be accused of being an applause-line speech. He spoke compellingly of the centrality of faith in his life. Mr. Romney always looks to me like a kindly, well-intentioned and intelligent man. That’s how he looked Thursday night. There are big policy differences between him and the president.” Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...wpisrc=nl_wonk

Our take on who was good and who was Clint Eastwood is below. Have thoughts of your own? The comments section awaits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...osers/?hpid=z2

DRIVING THE CONVERSATION - AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY: "Did Clint Eastwood lose the plot at Romney's convention?" by Reuters' Matt Spetalnick and Claudia Parsons: "Dirty Harry ... nearly hijacked the show with a rambling diatribe against President Obama - addressed to an empty chair. ... Eastwood's cameo appearance, including an ad-libbed monologue with an imaginary Obama in an empty chair, seemed to thrill many in the audience, but was widely panned by observers across the political spectrum.

"'Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic,' legendary Chicago film critic Roger Ebert said in a message on Twitter.com. 'He didn't need to do this to himself.' Former Romney adviser Mike Murphy tweeted: 'Note to file: Actors need a script.'"

--"MORNING" JOE SCARBOROUGH: "This was a terrible mistake, terrible staging, for what I think was otherwise a pretty brilliantly staged convention."

[Kev Bar]

Good piece from the Guardian on the scary chance of a Mitt success

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ney?CMP=twt_fd

[Count Bobulescu]

Good piece from the Guardian on the scary chance of a Mitt success

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ney?CMP=twt_fd

That's on the button.

[Count Bobulescu]

A debate over voter identification laws in several states has been heating up because of the upcoming election. The Voting Rights Act requires that several states, mostly southern states with a history of discrimination, get Federal Court approval for any proposed changes. Federal courts threw out both redistricting and voter ID laws for Texas this week, and will hopefully do the same for North Carolina shortly. Here’s a look at those two states plus a more general piece.

That the jurists would be so unanimous in their condemnation of these new laws surely comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to these cases. The bad "legislative facts" on which they were based, the cynical biases and assumptions they embraced, the sloppy social science they endorsed, the undertone of prejudice, the bureaucratic infirmities, all practically leaped off the briefing pages -- or, as we have seen this week in the South Carolina case, off the tongues of earnest state election officials.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-tampa/261795/

A federal court on Thursday blocked a Texas law that would have required voters to show photo identification, ruling that the legislation would impose “strict, unforgiving burdens” on poor minority voters.

Describing the law as the most stringent in the country, the unanimous decision by a three-judge panel marks the first time that a federal court has blocked a voter-ID law. It will reverberate politically through the November elections. Republicans and Democrats have been arguing over whether tough voter-ID laws in a number of states discriminate against African Americans and Hispanics.

The ruling followed a decision Tuesday by another three-judge panel in Washington that found the Republican-controlled Texas legislature had intentionally discriminated against Hispanics in drawing new legislative districts.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) said the state will appeal Thursday’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is the next stop in a voting rights case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...430_story.html

The state's chief election official -- a bureaucrat, not a politician -- patiently and professionally proves how the new law could be used to not only keep residents from voting but systematically discard their votes.

Relentlessly, professionally, candidly, she has revealed to the world the utter lack of sense behind the new law -- the lack of foresight on the part of the legislators, the Tea Partyers, and the conservative radicals, who scrambled to enact the odious measure in the face of reasonable, bipartisan, biracial alternatives. Under cross-examination by Garrard Beeney, Andino has delivered a river of evidence proving that the state's minorities -- and its poor, and its ill -- will effectively be disenfranchised by the new law.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...nation/261760/

Two new pieces on Romney in the current issue of Rolling Stone. I have a suspicion he is not their favorite. First by Tim Dickinson, 2nd by Matt Taibbi

Mitt Romney likes to say he won't "apologize" for his success in business. But what he never says is "thank you" – to the American people – for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible.

In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz258VJOm7m


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...omney-20120829

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.
The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously ****, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz258WRC0km

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...pital-20120829

[morticia]

Good piece from the Guardian on the scary chance of a Mitt success

yup, they could have a point. However, given Romney's proven malleability on matters of policy, the chances are a change of staff in the White House may make little difference to actual policy. Mitt may be gaffe prone, but he's neither thick nor ideologically fixated, by the look of it. Obama has been similarly flexible, moving to the right on a lot of issues once in power, much to the distress of his supporters. The best example is probably that Gitmo is still open. Meanwhile, we had Romney care.

Is this election a choice between two differently coloured chameleons?? Looks that way to me...

[Count Bobulescu]

Clint:rambled on and on and on ... got into a debate with an empty chair ... and lost LINK

My summary:

Gunslinger Unloads and Aides Duck

The repercussions of Clint Eastwood's utterly wackadoodle speech have already hit, as The New York Times' Michael Barabo and Jeremy W. Peters reports that at least a few Mitt Romney aides are making sure that everyone know they were not the one who approved that disaster.

"Finger-pointing quickly ensued, suggesting real displeasure and even confusion over the handling of Mr. Eastwood’s performance, which was kept secret until the last minute," Barbaro and Peters write, describing the scene within the Romney camp. But the truth, while no one is quick to admit it, is that (at one point) someone thought putting Eastwood up there was a great idea. "A senior Republican involved in convention planning said that Mr. Eastwood’s appearance was cleared by at least two of Mr. Romney’s top advisers, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens," they write. And Stevens himself tells The Times, "He spoke from the heart with a classic improv sketch which everyone at the convention loved." Everyone? Really?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/us...eech.html?_r=1

[Count Bobulescu]

Obama has been similarly flexible, moving to the right on a lot of issues once in power, much to the distress of his supporters. The best example is probably that Gitmo is still open. Meanwhile, we had Romney care.

Is this election a choice between two differently coloured chameleons?? Looks that way to me...

There are several reasons why Gitmo has not been closed. Chief among them that the Senate first refused to appropriate $80 million for the task. Then Congress passed a law banning the transfer of detainees from Gitmo to the US, except for prosecution. Then authorities in NYC reacted furiously when Eric Holder proposed holding the trials in NYC.

Obama has conceded that Guantanamo will not close anytime soon. “Obviously I haven’t been able to make the case right now, and without Congress’s cooperation, we can’t do it,” he said this month in an interview with the Associated Press. “That doesn’t mean I stop making the case.”

Administration officials lay blame for the failed initiative on Congress, including Democrats who deserted the president, sometimes in droves. The debate, they said, became suffused with fear — fear that transferring detainees to American soil would create a genuine security threat, fear that closing Guantanamo would be electoral suicide. Some Democratic lawmakers pleaded with the White House not to press too hard, according to administration officials.

The White House asserts it was fully engaged in the effort to close Guantanamo.
“Any claim that the White House didn’t fight to close Guantanamo is just flat wrong,” spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

This account of the unraveling of Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo is based on interviews with more than 30 current and former administration officials, as well as members of Congress and their staff, members of the George W. Bush administration, and activists. Many of them would speak about internal or sensitive deliberations only on the condition of anonymity.


But a bigger surprise was yet to come.

On May 20, 2009, as part of a war-funding request, the Senate voted 90 to 6 against appropriating $80 million to close Guantanamo. “Americans don’t want some of the most dangerous men alive coming here,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the floor of the chamber, adding that he commended Senate Democrats for “fulfilling their oversight responsibilities.”

In June 2009, Congress, as part of a supplemental war-funding bill, banned the transfer of Guantanamo detainees into the United States except for prosecution.

Without funding, and without the ability to immediately start the process of acquiring and refurbishing a prison, the one-year deadline was looking unachievable. “By the time he spoke at the National Archives, the prospect of getting it done by the end of the year was very slim,” Craig said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...5XE_story.html

[Kev Bar]

Jesus Count, will you negotiate our surrender before it's get too decadent and depraved out there.

Feels like Baghdad on beer.

Scary yanks in uniform.

Real scary yanks in casuals.

All inside the perimeter.

[Kev Bar]

You can see the whole inspiration for the Tea Party.

Pandering to the fears privileged ignorance on steroids.

[Binn Beal]

Every so often the star of a long-running Broadway musical dies or leaves the part. The show continues because it's the production not the performer that counts.

Which actor would you vote for to play the lead in... say Warhorse?
Decisions, decisions, decisions.

[Count Bobulescu]

Poll of Polls

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...bama-1171.html

BEHIND THE CURTAIN - N.Y. Times A1, "Before Talk With Chair, Clearance From the Top," by Michael Barbaro and Michael D. Shear in Tampa : "Romney privately invited Mr. Eastwood ... to speak after the actor had given him a gravelly, full-throated endorsement at a star-studded fund-raiser at the Sun Valley Resort Lodge in Idaho this summer. ... Thus began an effort by Mr. Romney's campaign over several weeks to inject a Hollywood-style surprise into the highly scripted, tightly controlled convention ... Eastwood's convention cameo was cleared by Mr. Romney's top message mavens, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, who drew up talking points that Mr. Eastwood included, in his own way. They gave him a time limit and flashed a blinking red light that told him his time was up. He ignored both. The actor's decision to use a chair as a prop was last-minute, and his own. ...

"Eastwood's rambling and off-color appearance just moments before the biggest speech of Mr. Romney's life instantly became a Twitter and cable-news sensation, which drowned out much of the usual postconvention analysis that his campaign had hoped to bask in. It also startled and unsettled Mr. Romney's top advisers and prompted a blame game among them. 'Not me,' an exasperated-looking senior adviser said when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood's speech. ... Ann Romney, who made the rounds of the three network morning shows, hardly pretended that she was happy as she was repeatedly asked about the speech. ... Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said on MSNBC that he 'cringed' as he sat in the hall during Mr. Eastwood's performance. ...

"Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks. ... He was scheduled to speak for about five minutes but stayed onstage for more than twice as long, throwing off the schedule for Mr. Romney." http://nyti.ms/O2WS3y

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/us...eech.html?_r=1



FIRST LOOK - RYAN LIZZA in The New Yorker, "The Political Scene: LET'S BE FRIENDS - Two Presidents find a mutual advantage": "The reconciliation began in earnest late last summer. Patrick Gaspard, the former White House political director, who has moved to the Democratic National Committee, approached Douglas Band, Clinton's closest political adviser and longtime gatekeeper, with some suggestions about how the former President might help with Obama's 2012 reëlection campaign. Band, who, by reputation, has an acute sense for moments of political advantage, tried to explain that you don't just call up Bill Clinton and tell him to raise money and campaign for you. Band recommended that the two Presidents begin by playing golf.

"The next day, Obama phone Clinton and invited him out for a round. Several Clinton associates say that this was the moment they realized that Obama truly wanted to win in 2012. Why else would he spend hours on a golf course being lectured by Clinton?

"The Presidential round was played at Andrews Air Force Base on September 24, 2011, and since then Clinton has become a visible and vigorous champion of Obama's reëlection. ... Now that Obama has turned the campaign into something of a referendum on Clinton's sterling record on the economy, Clinton can hardly complain. That may be part of Obama's strategy, too. Flattered by the attention, Clinton now has an incentive to work hard for Obama, who seems to have learned how to tame the former president."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...0fa_fact_lizza

--Also in the forthcoming New Yorker -- James Surowiecki, "The Financial Page: Clarifying Romney": "Romney hasn't been able to convince people that the weak economy is Obama's fault. ... [A] majority of voters still blame George W. Bush ... Romney's strategy was predicated on the idea that, as long as he appeared competent, all he had to do to win was be the not-Obama. But the inability to pin the weak economy on Obama has forced Romney to make a case for himself ... And this has proved more difficult than anticipated. Though Romney is arguably the most successful businessman ever to run for President , his career at Bain Capital does not inspire faith in him as a job creator, since private equity has always been more about efficiency and financial engineering than about creating jobs. ...

"Romney's specific policies haven't helped him much, either, partly because his economic speeches have been light on detail, and partly because his party's ideology limits the kinds of solutions he can offer ... And, while even a conservative could go after the Federal Reserve for doing too little to boost economic growth, Romney has made exactly the opposite argument. He has said that he would replace Ben Bernanke with someone who would support a 'strong dollar'-which means tighter monetary policy, fewer exports, and fewer jobs. ...

"The economy isn't ... enough of a winning issue to allow him to run the kind of successful clarifying campaign that Reagan and Clinton ran. This may help explain why ... Romney and his surrogates have abandoned their single-minded economic focus and begun attacking Obama on issues like welfare reform [and] cuts to Medicare."

DNC Charlotte Preview

--NEW THIS A.M. - "DNCC Announces Unprecedented Livestream Coverage For 2012 Convention": "[T]he entire Convention will be livestreamed on DemConvention.com/live and through the Democratic National Convention Committee Mobile App ... The entire program will be streamed in Spanish simultaneously. Millions of Americans will also be participating in more than 4,000 watch parties organized already in neighborhoods across the country. Some of these watch parties will be highlighted as part of Thursday night's programming.

... 'We are revolutionizing the way political conventions are done by making Charlotte 2012 more open, accessible and relevant to the American people,' [Obama for America] Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter said. ...

"On Thursday, ... the programming will also feature a web-only convention special starting at 8 p.m. ET Hosted by actor Kal Penn, the Live from Charlotte programming will include interviews with campaign officials and special guests, including Marc Anthony, Elizabeth Banks, Aisha Tyler, Olivia Wilde, Fran Drescher, Zach Braff, and Alexis Bledel. Later that evening, after President Obama's address, there will be a post-speech program featuring political analysis from political leaders."

CHEAT SHEET: NIGHT-BY-NIGHT CHARLOTTE PREVIEW -- 'Obama to try to make case for sticking with him,' by AP's Julie Pace : 'Obama ... will close the convention Thursday night with a speech in an outdoor football stadium, just as he did in 2008. Mindful of the comparisons to four years ago, Obama's campaign is scrambling to ensure that the 74,000-seat stadium is filled to capacity. The largest crowd Obama has drawn during the 2012 campaign is about 14,000 people ...

As in 2008, the campaign will use the large gathering to register voters and recruit new volunteers through text messaging and Twitter. Aides say Obama won't ignore the economic woes that have defined his four years in the White House. But they say he plans to focus largely on the future, and why he believes his policies will succeed in a second term. Obama isn't expected to outline any new policy proposals. Instead, he plans to make the case for continuing what he has started. And he is expected to double down on agenda items, like immigration and tax reforms, that gained little traction during his four years in office. ...

'The convention opens Tuesday with first lady Michelle Obama, whose popularity far surpasses her husband's, as a featured speaker. San Antonio, Texas, Mayor Julian Castro also is slated for that night. He will be the first Hispanic to deliver the Democratic convention's keynote address. Their roles on the convention's opening night are part of Democrats' efforts to shore up support among women and Hispanics, two crucial voting blocs where Obama holds an advantage over Romney. Mrs. Obama is expected to make the case that Obama is the best candidate to advocate on behalf of the middle class because he has experienced their struggles himself. ...

"Former President Bill Clinton ... will headline the convention Wednesday and formally nominate Obama. He hopes to remind voters of the flush economy he presided over and make the case that Obama's policies will lead to similar results. Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry will address the large stadium crowd Thursday night before Obama speaks. Kerry, seen as a potential second-term secretary of state under Obama, will try to capitalize on the Democratic Party's rare advantage on national security issues. He is expected to trumpet Obama's decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the president's plan to end the Afghanistan war, a sharp contrast to Republicans who rarely mentioned the war during their convention or the tens of thousands of troops still engaged in combat.

ASSESSING OBAMA:
--"Obama, party of one," by Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Allen : "Back in 2010, when his advisers were scouting possible locations for the 2012 convention, they briefly considered blowing up the traditional format by holding four small, one-day affairs in battleground states - most likely in Charlotte, Columbus, Las Vegas and Denver ... It was a telling, if symbolic gesture, underscoring Obama's drive to maintain an innovative brand distinct from his own party's traditions ... Over the past four years, he has led his party through the political wars, including some they didn't want to fight, while managing to forge only a handful of new relationships with Democrats outside his tight circle. ...

"These days, Obama's messaging is strikingly in tune with that of down-ballot Democrats. Yet there's a nagging sense among some headed to Charlotte that Obama is an enthusiastic Democrat who remains oddly unenthusiastic about other Democrats. 'I've been on Air Force One twice - with George W. Bush,' said one Democratic lawmaker, representing the sentiment of a half-dozen prominent Democrats interviewed by POLITICO." http://politi.co/O4ADKG


--WashPost splash, "WHO STOOD IN THE WAY OF CHANGE? Obama vowed a new era of unity. So why is Washington as divided as ever?" by Dan Balz: "White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said there has been a misunderstanding of just what Obama was talking about in 2008 when he called for a new politics. 'The president didn't promise an era of kumbaya politics in which everyone agreed ... The primary thing he talked most about was that politicians too often ran from big problems that had haunted our country for decades. Whether folks like it or not, he did jump in and take on very big problems with full knowledge that they would have political consequences for him.'" http://wapo.st/QRlKLD

--L.A. Times splash, "A DEEP DIVIDE: Frustrated at bridge-building, Obama's campaign gambles that partisanship can play to its advantage," by David Lauter in Charlotte : "[D]espite periodic disgruntlement on the left, he never faced the kind of challenge within his party that scuttled Jimmy Carter's presidency in 1980. ... [Last summer, a]mid the protracted efforts to reach a 'grand bargain' with Republicans over the government's long-term deficit and the standoff over the federal debt ceiling, assessments of Obama's job approval began to plunge. Among Democrats, his approval ratings dropped to a level that would have made reelection untenable. At that point, the White House began a significant shift of strategy. Keeping Washington at arm's length, using Congress as a foil and employing executive action much more often, Obama began looking for ways to confront Republicans ...
http://lat.ms/SakUve

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Four years ago, Barack Obama accepted the presidential nomination of a Democratic Party that was as unified and energized as at any moment in its past: Clintons and Kennedys, labor and Wall Street, centrists and leftists, old and young, blacks, whites and Hispanics. It bristled with the excitement of history and the expectations of a new era.

But Democrats are arriving here to nominate President Obama for a second term in an atmosphere far removed from the Denver convention in 2008, driven by a different kind of urgency and with new questions about their party’s direction.
Their unity at this point is defined less by faith in Mr. Obama or a robust vision for what the party should stand for than by the prospect that Republicans could control the White House and Congress next year and enact a conservative agenda that would unravel much of what Democrats have stood for since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

Mitt Romney’s selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate has only intensified the ideological fervor.

“It’s because the Republican Party has moved completely to the right,” Bob Kerrey, a centrist Democrat and former senator running again for the Senate from Nebraska, said of his party’s newfound unity.

Caroline Kennedy, whose endorsement, along with that of her uncle Senator Edward M. Kennedy, of Mr. Obama in 2008 signaled the generational excitement that marked the last campaign, said Democrats were approaching 2012 in “a more serious sober way, given the conditions.”

“They may not be as exhilarated as they were last time,” Ms. Kennedy said. “But I think they are just as committed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/us...1&ref=politics

These 12 questions were part of a Pew Research national survey. Most PW’ers should be able to do it with their eyes closed.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2012/quiz/


Here’s a better Pew quiz.

http://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/