US Presidential Election 2012

[Kev Bar]

Michelle's speech presented a well crafted, on message contrast to the inherent sociopath nature of Obama's opponents.

[Count Bobulescu]

Michelle's speech presented a well crafted, on message contrast to the inherent sociopath nature of Obama's opponents.

Yep, and she won in the hall, on TV, on the net, and on Twitter big time, which shows people were watching.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_1...ey-on-twitter/


Good photo of POTUS and daughters watching the speech here.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...wer-mom/56516/

[Spectabilis]

I took the quiz from you last link there Count. I am a Solid Liberal it seems ( in American terms of course) but I only share that with 14% of Americans.

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

[Count Bobulescu]

I took the quiz from you last link there Count. I am a Solid Liberal it seems ( in American terms of course) but I only share that with 14% of Americans.

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

That’s were I came too, and I was trying not to. If I remember there 7 categories. So 100/7=14.25 and everyone is happy.

[Kev Bar]

Yep, and she won in the hall, on TV, on the net, and on Twitter big time, which shows people were watching.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_1...ey-on-twitter/


Good photo of POTUS and daughters watching the speech here.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...wer-mom/56516/

Shame though that the optimism of 'yes we can' has to become the more defensive 'yes we care'.

[Count Bobulescu]

MICHAEL LEWIS in October's VANITY FAIR, "Obama's Way ": "'Lewis ... interviewed President Obama multiple times over six months-on Air Force One, in the Oval Office, and on the basketball court ... At play, the president wears red-white-and-blue Under Armor high-tops, but at work it's strictly blue or gray suits. 'I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make,' he tells Lewis. 'You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. ... Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable ... Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities.

"'Any given decision you make you'll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn't going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can't be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out. ... One of my most important tasks is making sure I stay open to people, and the meaning of what I'm doing, but not to get so overwhelmed by it that it's paralyzing. ... When I'm in Washington I spend half my time in [the Oval Office]. It's surprisingly comfortable." Preview http://vnty.fr/Q6vzjI

CONNECTING THE DOTS - "Read their lips: Who matters to Democrats," by Charles Mahtesian: "Here's a guide to what the list of speakers reveals about the Democratic Party: Uncompromising support for abortion rights ... A party rooted in the big cities ... There are nearly a dozen current mayors scheduled to speak, drawn from the nation's biggest cities - including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Antonio. The Democratic Party has owned urban America for more than a half-century. At one time, there was a political cost to that - it helped solidify the GOP grip on the suburbs. Now, however, Democrats are competitive in the suburbs, severely weakening what was once a GOP cornerstone. ...

"The congressional wing: The seemingly endless list of Democratic members of Congress slated to speak ... reflects a party that venerates its congressional wing. Republicans like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. But Democrats love Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. ... A deep bench of female officeholders ... A swing state skew: ... Virtually every prominent North Carolina Democrat ... will have a speaking role at the convention ... Other swing states will also be represented on stage by speakers such as former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Colorado gets a special focus" http://politi.co/Q6c0I7

THE FIRST LADY: "We learned ... that how hard you work matters more than how much you make; that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself. (Applause.) We learned ... that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules; and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square. ... I have seen firsthand that being President doesn't change who you are -- no, it reveals who you are. ... [F]or Barack, success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives. ... [T]oday I love my husband even more than I did four years ago, even more than I did 23 years ago, when we first met."


MEDIA GUSH, rounded up by Dylan Byers : "CNN's Wolf Blitzer: 'The First Lady not hitting a home run, but probably a grand slam.' ... NBC's Chuck Todd: 'Michelle Obama owned this convention in a way that no speaker owned the convention in Tampa.' ... CNN analyst David Gergen: 'If they have two more nights like this, they can probably break this race open.' ... Fox News's Martha McCallum: 'Incredibly positive, incredibly enthusiastic response from the floor.' ... Fox News' Brit Hume: 'Incredibly impressive woman.' ... MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: 'Oh my god.' ... MSNBC's Ed Schultz: 'Tonight we were reintroduced to a star.' ... CNN analyst Donna Brazille: 'Love is in the air.'"

JULIAN CASTRO, San Antonio mayor, age 37, nails keynote, hailed as rising star on par with Obama '04: "When it comes to expanding access to good health care, Mitt Romney says, 'No.' Actually, Mitt Romney said, 'Yes,' and now he says, 'No.' Governor Romney has undergone an extreme makeover, and it ain't pretty." Transcript http://fxn.ws/TlGhaw

Democrats make their opening pitch about the values which inform governance and policy. “Democrats opened their convention here on Tuesday night with two simple messages for voters: Mitt Romney does not get it, and President Obama does. A parade of Democratic officials spent the first hours of the gathering detailing a political indictment of Mr. Romney, blistering him as being out of touch with the middle class and intent on taking the country back to the policies that caused the economy's problems…The speakers here pounded Mr. Romney on immigration, on health care, on Medicare, on foreign policy, on the 2009 auto bailout and on his tax policies, which they said would benefit the rich at the expense of the working class and cause the same kind of economic damage that they said Mr. Obama had worked so hard to undo.” Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/us...wpisrc=nl_wonk

Michelle Obama stole the show on the first night of the convention. “[T]he main attraction of the evening was the appearance of Mr. Obama's lead character witness…Mrs. Obama sought to remind his 2008 voters that the same person they supported then is underneath the tarnish she sought to buff away. The address was meant to lay the foundation for a convention program devised to remind wavering working- and middle-class voters — the same ones Mr. Romney is working so hard to woo away — what they liked about the president when they supported him four years ago, and how his own humbler roots have helped inspire his policies to help them…Mrs. Obama's was almost the only voice lacking an explicit anti-Romney edge, conveying a personal tone and touch.” Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times.

TONIGHT'S MAIN EVENT - L.A. Times A1, "Clinton's clout hasn't faded: His convention appearance could influence two elections," by Paul West: "His personal approval ratings have never been higher, easily exceeding Obama's. His easy drawl is bombarding the airwaves in battleground state television ads broadcast by the Obama team. Obama has asked Clinton to place his name in nomination, ... the first ex-president to have that honor ... Clinton is already raising money for Obama from wealthy donors and volunteering strategic advice. 'He calls me frequently,' said a senior Obama campaign official in Chicago. 'He is all the way in.'

"He is also keeping the family business alive while his wife finishes her term as secretary of State. He has been making endorsements in down-ballot races and raising money for Democrats who backed her presidential campaign and could be in a position to help her again." http://lat.ms/OakjIn

MAUREEN DOWD, ON HILLARY '16 - "The Comeback Vegan": "Bill, hailed by some as the first black president, must expand Barry's narrative to reach back and link Obama's roiling tenure of wars, debt and partisan-fencing to Clinton's restful stretch of prosperity. ... And what does the Big Dog get? Resurrection, redemption, relevance, a reflected patina of Obama integrity and fidelity; the chance to outshine the upstart who outmaneuvered his wife and, by extension, him in 2008. And a possible ticket back to the Oval, this time as the first First Man, a vegan gnawing on Michelle's vegetable garden.

"It's not a bromance, like Romney and Paul Ryan. It's a transaction. Obama needs his Democratic predecessor to reassure jittery voters that the future can look like the past, with a lower deficit, plenty of jobs and the two parties actually talking. In return, Bill will have the capital to try to ensure that the past can look like the future, with Hillary as Obama's successor. What a wild twist. Instead of ushering in the post-Clinton era, as intended, Obama has ushered in the pre-Clinton era." http://nyti.ms/Ql2CE9

ALSO TONIGHT - Boston Globe A1, "Warren to try for impact near and far," by Noah Bierman: "Elizabeth Warren plans to deliver a speech ... that will portray her as a fighter who, along with President Obama, 'stood strong' on behalf of the middle class to create a consumer protection agency ... The 12-minute, prime-time speech .... offers Warren a crucial opportunity to sell herself to Massachusetts voters, especially the undecided .... tuned out the early phases of her campaign against Senator Scott Brown.... Her chief strategist, Doug Rubin, said she will not mention Brown by name, instead focusing on the differences between Obama and Romney. ... Rubin said Warren will tell 'the personal story of the role the president played' in designing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the financial crisis." Behind pay wall

SUBTLE ATTACKS EXPECTED FROM CLINTON. When Bill Clinton takes the stage at the Democratic convention tonight, he is expected to make the case for President Obama. But more important may be his case against Mitt Romney. Clinton knows how to go negative without turning off politics-averse swing voters, a rare gift. Some call it the art of the “implied negative.” One lawmaker even called Clinton “the great insinuator.” At a time when Obama must both sell his vision and undercut Mitt Romney, Clinton could help. “I don’t think he needs to put spin on the ball,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said earlier this week. “All he needs to do is [give] the facts.” Also speaking tonight are Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villariagosa and Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal.

CONVENTION’S OPENING NIGHT WAS A HARD-EDGED APPEAL TO WOMEN. If Republicans played up their feminine side last week in Tampa, Democrats on Tuesday were unabashedly feminist. The opening night of the Democratic convention was a hard-edged appeal to college-educated, suburban women, a group of Democratic-leaning swing votes President Obama needs to lock up. Speaker after speaker challenged Republicans on birth control, abortion, education, fair pay, and other wedge issues. Michelle Obama capped the evening with an eloquent speech (full text here) making the argument for four more years. “Change is hard, and change is slow, and it never happens all at once,” Obama said, an acknowledgment of the disappointment many have felt about her husband’s first term in office. “But eventually we get there, we always do.” Read more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...women-20120904


ARE WE BETTER OFF? THE NUMBERS SAY NO. The middle class in America today is not better off than it was four years ago, not better off than it was at the end of the Great Recession in 2009, not even better off than when Clinton left office in 2001. The truth that Democrats must confront at their national convention is that the middle class has been declining for more than a decade. Since 2000, the Pew Research Center reported recently, “the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means all—of its characteristic faith in the future.

INSIDERS: OBAMA HASN’T ANSWERED ‘BETTER OFF’ QUESTION WELL. National Journal’s Insiders Poll shows that only one third of Democratic respondents say President Obama has articulated an effective response to the question, “are you better off than you were four years ago?” Only two percent of Republican respondents thought so. “Surprising they didn’t have a solid answer in the can,” wrote one respondent. “This was a lay-up and they missed the basket.” Read more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily...-well-20120904

ROMNEY GAVE DEMOCRATS AN OPPORTUNITY ON AFGHANISTAN. Mitt Romney handed Democrats an opportunity last week when he didn't mention U.S. troops or the war in Afghanistan in his acceptance speech, and they wasted no time grabbing it. On the first night of the Democratic convention, disabled Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, a candidate for Congress, said Romney had a chance last week to show his support for the troops he wants to command. "But he chose to criticize President Obama instead of even uttering the word Afghanistan,” she said. “Barack Obama will never ignore our troops.”

BOTH OLD AND NEW OUT AT CONVENTION. Democrats relegated one of their brightest young stars, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, to an early-evening time slot. Booker gave a fiery speech as the crowd chanted his name, but it aired only on C-SPAN. If Booker was sidelined, it was worse for President Jimmy Carter. Though only days away from setting the record for the longest ex-presidency, Carter lost 44 states in 1980 and is still pilloried for his performance in office. He was relegated to presentation via video, and even that was eclipsed by a tribute to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, which drew a deeply emotional response from the convention floor.

PROTESTS, SECURITY CREATE CHAOTIC FIRST DAY OF CONVENTION. Rowdy protesters and stepped-up security created havoc in uptown Charlotte on the first day of the Democratic convention. For several hours in the afternoon, a standoff between protesters identifying themselves with the Occupy Wall Street Movement and police blocked roads, exacerbating an already jammed traffic situation. Delegates, guests and even other protesters were either stranded or not able to get to where they needed to go. Charlotte police arrested three people, including two who disrupted a National Journal event on energy and a third for breaching a police line. Read more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily...id=site_search

NATIONAL DEBT REACHES $16 TRILLION AND REPUBLICANS REACT. House Republicans moved swiftly to point fingers at President Obama following the announcement on Tuesday by the United States Treasury Department that the national debt now surpasses $16 trillion. House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement that the national debt has increased more than $5 trillion during Obama’s term. “This debt is a drain on our economy and a crushing burden on our kids and grandkids, and it’s yet another indication that the president’s policies have made things worse,’’ Boehner said.

[Count Bobulescu]

2 SPEAKS - DRIVING NIGHT 2 OF THE DNC: "In Tampa the Republican argument against the President's re-election was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn't finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in," Bill Clinton plans to say in the second half of the 10 p.m. hour, according to a short excerpt just shared with reporters by the Obama campaign. "I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a more modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators...The most important question is, what kind of country do you want to live in? If you want a 'you're-on-your-own, winner-take-all' society, you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility -- a 'we're-all-in-this-together' society -- you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden."

BRIAN WILLIAMS showed Clinton the cover of Newsweek ("Why Barack needs Bill") during an interview that airs tonight. Then he asked: "Why do you think Barack needs Bill?" Clinton's response: "I really don't know. I've always been mystified by that...I hope what I can do, because we did have a good economy, because we did have the longest expansion in history, is explain why I think his approach is right and it'll pay off if we renew his contract. Explain why the economy he faced was much weaker and different than the one I faced, so that...no president could have restored it to full health in just four years." 50-second video: http://goo.gl/nvk9p.

AMERICA LOVES BILL NOW MORE THAN EVER BEFORE: 69% of Americans view Clinton favorably going into the DNC speech, according to Gallup. 27% view him unfavorably. http://goo.gl/OKlNl

STUMBLE - DNC ADDS "GOD" AND "JERUSALEM" BACK INTO THE PLATFORM: "A Wednesday voice vote on the floor of the Democratic convention put the party in two awkward binds - pitting them against both official U.S. policy and many of their own delegates," Byron Tau reports. "The Democrats restored language affirming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and putting mentions of God back into their platforms in a quick voice vote that the Democratic chair declared had passed. Convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa held three voice votes - two of which failed, before Villaraigosa declared the third passed with a two-third majority. After passage, boos were heard in the convention hall..." A campaign source confirms to POLITICO's Reid Epstein an Associated Press report that the president himself ordered the change: http://goo.gl/NnlNo.

MSNBC WINS NIGHT ONE: 4.1 million watched MSNBC in the 10 p.m. hour Tuesday, and 5 million watched NBC. Only 2.4 million watched Fox News during the same hour, the lowest of all six major news channel and close to one-third as many as watched on night one of the Republican National Convention. Dylan Byers reports that this is the first time MSNBC, which has embraced its liberal commentators, outperformed its competitors on a convention night. About 21.9 million watched the primetime hour of the DNC's first night, compared to 20.5 million for the RNC. http://goo.gl/dwR8u

NOT DUMBING IT DOWN: Michelle Obama's speech was written at a 12th grade level as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, according to the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog. Ann Romney's was written at a fifth-grade level by the same metric. http://goo.gl/Y4eQ7

LIGHTER CLICKS-

If you want to take a walk down memory lane while waiting for Bill's speech, here are FIVE ADS that HILLARY CLINTON ran against Obama in April 2008-Oil: http://goo.gl/W5lbe. Lobbyists: http://goo.gl/eI0jJ. As out of touch: http://goo.gl/hFZj0. On health care: http://goo.gl/9NsxQ. On the economy: http://goo.gl/Uw4vI.

YVETTE CLARK, the New York congresswoman, told Stephen Colbert during a sit-down interview that the Dutch held slaves in Brooklyn as late as 1898: http://goo.gl/B9wCH.

CHRIS CHRISTIE sang Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon": http://goo.gl/iErHV.

RON PAUL told Jay Leno that he won't run as a third-party candidate. "I have to take a rest and prepare for 2016," he said. "Just kidding!!!" 1-minute clip: http://goo.gl/7clIY.

THE ORIGINAL OBAMA GIRL, who wrote and sang the 2008 viral video, has recorded a new video called "Still Got a Crush on Obama." 3-minutes: http://goo.gl/KkDuX.

KAL PENN stars in another web video released by the Obama campaign. This one features Joe Biden. 30-seconds: http://goo.gl/xALzc.

[C. Flower]

THE FIRST LADY: "We learned ... that how hard you work matters more than how much you make; that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself. (Applause.) We learned ... that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules; and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square. ... I have seen firsthand that being President doesn't change who you are -- no, it reveals who you are. ... [F]or Barack, success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives. ... [T]oday I love my husband even more than I did four years ago, even more than I did 23 years ago, when we first met."

Michele Obama's speech, that portrays her husband as a poor man who struggled against adversity to reach the top, epitomising the American Dream was a careful misrepresentation. Both of them are mulitmillionaires and both benefitted from education at top schools. Just because they aren't billionaires like the Romney's doesn't make them poor.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...835686,00.html

Under Obama, the economy has shifted further into being a low wage economy. "Work like never before" Michelle Obama said.

[Kev Bar]

Take a look at the contempt laced trauma on that sociopath's face.

http://www.upworthy.com/mitt-romney-...ess-ensues?g=2

[Kev Bar]

Michele Obama's speech, that portrays her husband as a poor man who struggled against adversity to reach the top, epitomising the American Dream was a careful misrepresentation. Both of them are mulitmillionaires and both benefitted from education at top schools. Just because they aren't billionaires like the Romney's doesn't make them poor.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...835686,00.html

Under Obama, the economy has shifted further into being a low wage economy. "Work like never before" Michelle Obama said.

Are we to laud being poor per se?

That seems as daft as praising being rich per se.

But that aside, Ms Flower, perhaps you should take a peek at that which you link to back your point.

The child of Marian and Fraser Robinson, a stay-at-home mother and a city pump operator, Michelle was raised in a close-knit family that ate every meal together, played Monopoly and read together. "Nobody emphasized public service. What was emphasized was doing what you love to do and you'll be good at whatever you do," says Craig Robinson, Michelle's brother, who left his banking job after a decade to coach college basketball. That didn't stop Robinson from being surprised when Michelle left Sidley Austin to become an assistant to Chicago mayor Richard Daley. "Her father asked her, 'Don't you want to pay your student loans?' " her mother, Marian, recalls. One of her college roommates, Angela Acree, remembers being stunned. "I'm sure at Sidley she made more money than her parents ever made," says Acree. "It just seemed incredible at the time that she'd leave."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...#ixzz25hWDhlcd

[Count Bobulescu]

Michele Obama's speech, that portrays her husband as a poor man who struggled against adversity to reach the top, epitomising the American Dream was a careful misrepresentation. Both of them are mulitmillionaires and both benefitted from education at top schools. Just because they aren't billionaires like the Romney's doesn't make them poor.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...835686,00.html

Under Obama, the economy has shifted further into being a low wage economy. "Work like never before" Michelle Obama said.

Aw Jeez CF, I yield to no-one in my admiration of your capacity to find trouble where none exists. You are a master of the counter narrative.

Could you please explain how you believe Michele “carefully misrepresented”?

Obama is a multi-millionaire today, but only became one recently. Most of the family income of about $7million last year and in 2010 comes from royalties from his books.

In 2000 he was unable to gain admittance to the L.A. Convention, and had maxed out his credit card in the attempt. He was the keynote speaker in 2004, and from that point on started to earn big money. Neither he nor Michele were legacy students at Harvard, they won scholarships. (Obama’a father did attend but failed to finish).

BTW the article you linked predates Michele’s speech, so I don’t know why you linked to it, and as KB has noted it does not reinforce the points you make.

[Count Bobulescu]

CLINTON DOES OBAMA’S DIRTY WORK. In a speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, former President Clinton framed the election in ways that President Obama simply cannot, branding the GOP as extremist, obstructionist and hateful (see video and full text). In doing so, writes National Journal’s Ron Fournier, Clinton cleared a path for Obama to be forward-looking and aspirational in his convention-closing address tonight, when he will accept the Democratic nomination. “No president—not me or anyone before me—no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years,” Clinton said of the economy. "But conditions are improving and if you’ll renew the president’s contract you will feel it.

]http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...-work-20120905

JIM VANDEHEI, to Willie Geist on MSNBC's "Way Too Early," re Bill Clinton's 48-minute tour de force: "The guy couldn't have loved it more. If you just think about ... the history of politics and eight years ago, how scuffed the Clinton brand was. ... Four years ago, how much tension there was between the two families. And now you have the current president NEEDING the stamp of approval, wanting that stamp of approval from Bill Clinton ... It had all the passion ... He was at times self-indulgent ...

"A note of caution: There's a pretty big disconnect between the speech that Bill Clinton gave, and what you're hearing from the rest of this convention. There's no talk of abortion. No talk of social issues. No business-bashing. No mention of Bain. ... He's speaking like it's 1999. ...

"If you think of this speech, and you think of Paul Ryan's speech, ... the beauty of both of those speeches is that if you read 'em, they're much tougher than if you watch them. They do it with a smile, they did it with a style that allows them to do a very harsh critique of the opponent, without offending people. Bill Clinton still believes, powerfully, that [you have to appeal to] that 6 percent of authentically undecided voters [who] are really going to decide the election ... So he likes to talk about cooperation, likes to talk about where there is shared or common interest in getting things done for the country. You haven't heard a lot of that."

JOHN DICKERSON, on Slate: "Clinton has now spoken for a total of more than five hours at Democratic conventions. ... By the time Barack Obama arrived on the stage to receive a bow from the 42nd president, it seemed like it should have been Obama doing the bowing." http://slate.me/QbNv1O

MARGARET CARLSON on Bloomberg View, "How Democrats Lost Their Way on Abortion": "Why has the party removed the sentence 'Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare' from its platform? It was in the 2004 document but not in 2008's or this year's. Can't Democrats just throw a crumb to the many millions who are pro-choice but not pro-abortion?" http://bloom.bg/Opbw0P

CONVENTION TONIGHT: Leading up to the President, Sen. John Kerry will offer a detailed critique of the "Romney-Ryan foreign policy." Watch for him to call it naïve and extreme, arguing that they would make us less safe. The 2004 nominee will say Obama kept his promises on Iraq and Afghanistan, killed Bin Laden, led in Libya and reduced the threat of nuclear proliferation.

JOHN HARRIS and JONATHAN MARTIN, "How Bill Clinton Does It ": "Repeatedly, Clinton cited a barrage of facts and figures, woven with historical context, sometimes in a highly argumentative way. He boasted that in the past 52 years, Democratic administrations have created 44 million jobs, compared to 24 million under Republicans. The point is not that Clinton's every factual assertion is entirely fair on in context. Like all politicians, Clinton is selective in which facts he chooses to highlight. But his emphasis on policy has the effect-and in large measure the reality-of seeming to treat voters as adults who must be reached by reason, rather than Hallmark-card sentimentality. ...
"Besides himself, Clinton mentioned five presidents ... and only one of them, Obama, was a Democrat. The others to received favorable references were Eisenhower, Reagan, and both Bushes, who Clinton emphasized he has worked with closely. He said his complaint is not with Republicans, but only with a "far right" faction of the party that doesn't share his belief in cooperation." http://politi.co/OWobaK

DAVIDMARANISS, WashPost A1, "THE 42ND PRESIDENT: The party's big voice, booming again ": "Clinton did not seem rambling so much as direct and fast and eager. His voice grew more powerful if scratchy, his signature gesticulations became more frequent - the thumb point, the finger point and finger roll, the open-handed can-you-believe-it lament, the raised eyebrows - as he made the case for Obama and against the Republicans and moved through the issues one after another, from health-care reform to the auto industry bailout to Medicare to tax and budget cuts. In classic Clinton style, the more he got going, the less inclined he was to follow his printed text, ad-libbing his way through a series of knowing asides such as, 'I know; I get it; I've been there.'" http://wapo.st/SmrVJo

10 REACTIONS TO CLINTON'S SPEECH: (all from reporters)

@davidaxelrod: Bill Clinton's incisive, wise and witty speech tonight laid the Republican canard bare. This is was a successful convention looks like!

@jmartpolitico: Thinking we'll see the wjc line about believing w all his heart in obama on swing state tv before first frost in toledo

@MarkHalperin: As Hillary Clinton has said, when* he dies, they should study his brain. *'If,' I mean.

@BobCusack: It's official: This speech is longer than Clinton's 1988 address.

@NowWithAlex: There's only one person who can stop him. She's in Asia.

@JodiKantor: What does Hillary Clinton really say to her husband about Barack Obama? We'll never know.

@JonWard11: cheers for George W. bush at #dnc12 #headexplodes

@PeterBakerNYT: Obama is a speaker, Clinton is a talker. Clinton doesn't reach Obama's oratorical heights but he engages an audience like few others.

@maddow: 'Big Dog' trending, without a hashtag.

@jonathanmprince: Once more, with feeling: Stick. A. Fork. In. It.


ROSENTHAL: Clinton’s hour of needed. “Watching Bill Clinton take the stage at the Democratic National Convention and take over the room with his first few, simple words — ‘We are here to nominate a President and I've got one in mind’ — was like watching a great violinist follow a group of gifted amateurs. His commanding presence, his let's-just-chat manner, the familiar sound of his southern growl were the perfect counterpoint to the Republican Party's assault on President Obama at its convention in Tampa last week. He skewered the Republicans gently, biting his lower-lip in characteristic fashion. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger…He fed the audience a string of statistics — about job creation and health care reform and Medicare and Medicaid — so smoothly that no one seemed to notice they were listening to an unusually policy-focused speech…This was his perfect moment.” Andrew Rosenthal in The New York Times.

Frmr. Pres. Bill Clinton gave a roaring, detailed, and lengthy speech on Obama’s behalf. “Former President Bill Clinton delivered a spirited defense of President Obama's handling of the nation's struggling economy here Wednesday night as he criticized the economic agenda of Republican nominee Mitt Romney and an opposition GOP he argued has been unwilling to compromise for the good of the country. Clinton, in a speech to the Democratic National Convention formally nominating Obama that was aimed squarely at independent voters, said America is ‘clearly better off’ than four years ago and argued that many of the serious problems ailing the economy were ‘inherited’ from Republicans. He said that, despite the slow recovery, Obama has spent the last four years laying the foundation for a more vibrant and balanced economy and needs four more years to see that vision through.” Philip Rucker and Dan Balz in The Washington Post.

Bill Clinton trusts the American people to care about policy, and so the American people trust Bill Clinton to tell them about it..

Bill Clinton’s prepared remarks: 3,136 words. Bill Clinton’s remarks as delivered: 5,895 words.

Why Bill Clinton’s speeches succeed.

Because he treats listeners as if they are smart.

That is the significance of "They want us to think" and "The strongest argument is" and "The arithmetic says one of three things must happen" and even "Now listen to me here, this is important." He is showing that he understands the many layers of logic and evidence and positioning and emotion that go into political discussion -- and, more important, he takes for granted that listeners can too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...ucceed/262032/




Elizabeth Warren: We struggled with where to fit the Massachusetts Democratic Senate nominee in our winners and losers post. There is little question that the crowd in the convention hall loved every word she spoke. Why? Because Warren’s speech was larded with the sort of populist calls to action that the liberal base of the Democratic party so badly wants from its party leadership; “People feel like the system is rigged against them,” she said at one point to huge applause. The reaction to Warren in the room made clear that if she winds up in the Senate in 2013, she will immediately become part of the 2016 Democratic presidential conversation. But, the heat with which Warren delivered her speech made us wonder that it might not make it slightly harder for her to get to the Senate this fall. Do conservative Democrats and independents in Massachusetts react to that sort of tenor and tone? Still, Warren owned the room in a way no one before her on the podium had done. Watch video of the speech.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtij5dR3dA"]Elizabeth Warren DNC Speech Complete: 'Corporations Are Not People' - Democratic National Convention - YouTube[/ame]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...650_video.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...rs-and-losers/

MA Sen. candidate Elizabeth Warren won the support of the convention floor for her anti-Wall Street populism. “Clinton and Warren represented two wings of the party — with Clinton the original architect of the centrist New Democrat philosophy that built bridges to business and brought the party back to the White House in the 1990s — and Warren a strong voice for the progressive grassroots activists who have led an attack on Wall Street, big corporations and the so-called ‘one percent.’ Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who is fighting to unseat Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, got a huge response when she took the stage just ahead of Clinton. She delivered a populist blast, attacking what she said was a rigged system in which Wall Street and corporate America have profited while the middle class has been ‘chipped, squeezed and hammered.’” Philip Rucker and Dan Balz in The Washington Post.

I hope Democratic elites note that the audience couldn’t stop applauding Warren’s messages of basic economic fairness and accountability.

More: The 5 best lines of Warren’s speech, as judged by Politico’s Kevin Cirilli.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories...wpisrc=nl_wonk



NEW BOB WOODWARD BOOK OUT NEXT WEEK - ABC's Rick Klein: "'The Price of Politics' ... shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing a spending framework that included both new revenues and major changes to long-sacred entitlement programs. ... The president called three times to speak with Boehner about his latest offer ... But the speaker didn't return the president's phone call for most of an agonizing day ... When Boehner finally did call back, he jettisoned the entire deal. Obama lost his famous cool ... with a 'flash of pure fury' coming from the president; one staffer in the room said Obama gripped the phone so tightly he thought he would break it. 'He was spewing coals,' Boehner told Woodward, in what is described as a borderline 'presidential tirade.'

"'He was pissed.... He wasn't going to get a damn dime more out of me. He knew how far out on a limb I was. But he was hot. It was clear to me that coming to an agreement with him was not going to happen' ... 'I was pretty angry,' the president told Woodward about the breakdown in negotiations. 'There's no doubt I thought it was profoundly irresponsible, at that stage, not to call me back immediately and let me know what was going on.' ...

"Woodward recounts an episode early in his presidency when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were hammering out final details of the stimulus bill. Obama phoned in to deliver a 'high-minded message' ... Obama went on so long that Pelosi 'reached over and pressed the mute button on her phone,' so they could continue to work without the president hearing that they weren't paying attention." Diane Sawyer interviews Woodward Monday on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline." http://abcn.ws/NNXU3t

--WashPost A3, "Discord brought nation to brink of default: New Woodward book describes how Obama ceded power to Congress during debt-ceiling talks with Republicans," by Steve Luxenberg : "On Sunday, The Washington Post will publish an adaptation ... The book is scheduled for release on Tuesday. Woodward is a Post associate editor. ... Congress's reemergence as a political force is one of the book's underlying themes. For decades, Capitol Hill has been ceding influence and authority to the White House ... In Woodward's account, the balance of power has shifted at least temporarily back to the legislative branch, ... aided by the Obama administration's failure to nurture the alliances that it needed to offset the GOP's huge victory in the 2010 midterm elections." http://wapo.st/PKRlug

[Count Bobulescu]

The Simple Case for Why Obama Is the Favorite
By NATE SILVER

1. Polls usually overrate the standing of the candidate who just held his convention.
2. Mitt Romney just held his convention. But he seems to have gotten a below-average bounce out of it. The national polls that have come out since the Republican National Convention have shown an almost exact tie in the race.
3. If the polls overrate Mr. Romney, and they show only a tie for him now, then he will eventually lose.
The first point is the simplest of all, but perhaps the most important. There is a lot of focus on the bounce that a candidate gets after his convention — that is, how the polls conducted just after the convention compare with the ones taken immediately beforehand.

On average, between 1968 and 2008, the challenging candidate led by 10 percentage points in polls conducted just after his convention. By comparison, the challenging candidate eventually lost the popular vote by an average of three points in these years. That means the post-convention polls overrated the challenger by an average of 13 points.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...-the-favorite/

FOOTBALL WINS NIGHT 2 RATINGS WAR: "Roughly 21.8 million people watched the NFL season opener between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys on NBC last night, more than the entire audience for former President Bill Clinton's convention speech across the five other broadcast and cable networks," Dylan Byers reports. "In the 10 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. block, roughly 20 million people watched Clinton's speech on ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, according to CNN's release of the Nielsen fast nationals. 4.6 million watched ABC, 4.5 million watched MSNBC, 4.4 million watched CBS, 4.3 million watched CNN, and just over 3 million watched Fox News."

NOTABLE - DEMS NO LONGER AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT OBAMACARE: Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama and Julian Castro each touted the health care law in their convention speeches. It's a big change from before the Supreme Court upheld the law, as several speakers at the convention even embrace the term "Obamacare." Manu Raju and Joanne Kenen explain why this is risky: http://goo.gl/Ob22L.

SPOTTED-
-- JOHN KERRY dining with British Labour big David Miliband at BLT in the Ritz.

QUOTED in Charlotte-

Massachusetts Congressman BARNEY FRANK went totally off-script during his speech tonight: "It turns out our governor was Mitt Romney and what we should have had as governor was 'Myth Romney.' Myth Romney is a wonderful private-sector executive who, when he moved into the public sector, can transform it. I wish Myth Romney had been governor of the state I had lived in. If it had been Myth Romney, I'd probably be riding the commuter train from New Bedford to Boston right now.

THE BUZZ IN CHARLOTTE: Reporters think President Obama's speech was lame - meandering, and sounding like a State of the Union address. People at the after-parties seemed baffled that he didn't lift his game for the big moment. But mostly Republicans watched the Republican convention, and mostly Democrats watched the Democratic convention. So the acceptance speeches weren't as big a moment for talking to swing voters as they were in the past.

THE PRESIDENT, seizing on Romney's baffling and costly omission of any mention of the troops or the wars in his Tampa speech, laid the predicate for a potentially devastating attack in the first debate, on Oct 3 in Denver: Mitt Romney is just not ready. The subtext of much of Obama's 40-minute speech (which mentioned Romney by name only once, but was laced with digs at the opposition) was: Trust me. The other guy is a bumbling amateur, not presidential.

THE KEEPER PASSAGE: "My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy. (Laughter, applause.) But from all that we've seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly. After all, you don't call Russia our number one enemy -- not al- Qaida, Russia -- (laughter) -- unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp. (Cheers, applause.) You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can't visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally. (Laughter, cheers, applause.)"


MATT BAI has the cover of Sunday's N.Y. Times Magazine, "Way to Go Ohio : Was it Obama's auto bailout that saved Ohio from falling off the cliff? Or was it the policies of the Republican governor, John Kasich? Or was it something else entirely? The answer could decide the next presidency": "While most of the debate nationally still revolves around why the economy remains so pathetic, there are several pivotal states - Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Virginia - where things are slowly turning around. In these states, the real issue may not be who deserves blame for economic ruin but rather who deserves credit for a rebound, and what really causes jobs to come back after they've been lost.

"Republican governors are saying that unemployment rates have plummeted because of their pro-business policies. The president is saying that the hard decisions he made earlier in his term are finally starting to pay off. And then there's Mitt Romney, a congenital optimist who finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to be a total downer, arguing that there really isn't a recovery at all. 'Trust Me: You're Still Miserable' could be Romney's bumper sticker in Ohio." http://nyti.ms/P7kOBu

BREAKING - Romney releases 15 ads (incorporating Tampa footage) in 8 states (Col., Fla., Iowa, Nev., N.H., N.C., Ohio, Va.): "A Better Future: Colorado - Defense": http://mi.tt/OTYyJp ... "A Better Future: Colorado - Overregulation": http://mi.tt/OTYwkx ... "A Better Future: Florida - Defense": http://mi.tt/Soz6kl ... "A Better Future: Florida - Home Values": http://mi.tt/SoBbN6 ... "A Better Future: Iowa - Deficit": http://mi.tt/RgpIOn ... "A Better Future: Iowa - Overregulation": http://mi.tt/NPuJNx ... "A Better Future: Nevada": http://mi.tt/NPviXK ... "A Better Future: New Hampshire": http://mi.tt/RgpXsz ...
"A Better Future: North Carolina - Defense": http://mi.tt/OZdpke ... "A Better Future: North Carolina - Manufacturing": http://mi.tt/OZflZX ... "A Better Future: Ohio - Defense": http://mi.tt/SoxmaP ... "A Better Future: Ohio - Manufacturing": http://mi.tt/RrasbC ... "A Better Future: Virginia - Energy": http://mi.tt/Q8aSVX ... "A Better Future: Virginia - Defense": http://mi.tt/Q8aPtn ... "A Better Future: Virginia - Families": http://mi.tt/QpEJv0

--AP's Steve Peoples: "Officials who track such spending report that Romney has purchased about $4.5 million in new advertising for the next several days."

PULLING BACK THE CAMERA - A TALE OF TWO CONVENTIONS -- John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei: "Race and the culture wars are back on center stage: There wasn't a single day at either convention that didn't see accusations of racial insensitivity or outright racism ... Republicans have a terrible demographic problem: ... Diversity in Tampa was highlighted on the podium, but the whiteness of the party, and its seeming economic and cultural homogeneity, was obvious on the convention floor and the social events ...

"Republicans come out of convention season behind: ... Many GOP activists heard vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and keynote speaker Marco Rubio, both in their early 40s, and wished the party had decided to make a generational shift this time instead of embracing the 65-year-old Romney as nominee." http://politi.co/P6YA2y

--DEM. CONVENTION TAKEAWAYS -- Maggie Haberman: "Obama was fine, Clinton was better. ... Energy and message went to Charlotte over Tampa. ... The dynamics of the race are unchanged. ... The base rules. ... Democrats hold the foreign policy upper hand." http://politi.co/NQ2bmZ

--"What was missing from Obama's convention speech," by Darren Samuelsohn: "Here's a look at the main things missing from the Obama acceptance speech: Health care: ... Obama made only passing reference to the health care law ... didn't give it a shout out by name. ... Stimulus ... Housing: ... He dedicated just a single sentence to his administration's efforts to stop some of the predatory lending practices that prompted the housing crisis ... Voter ID laws: ... This was a chance before a national audience to swing hard at Republican legislatures for eliminating early-voting windows and requiring voters to produce identification." http://politi.co/RhYN4K

As convention closes, Dems optimistic about electoral map. “Hours after he finished his speech to delegates here, President Barack Obama was to head back to the stark realities of a close election, trading cheering crowds of party faithful for voters who still aren’t sold on his re-election in a handful of battleground states…Mr. Obama began his campaign a year ago having plotted multiple routes to the 270 electoral votes needed to win a second term. Virtually every one is still viable, polling suggests…The idea is to hold onto some combination of states that he won last time around, Obama aides said…” Peter Nicholas and Carol E. Lee in The Wall Street Journal.

And the auditions for 2016 have begun. “Democrats gathering here for their national convention were given an early glimpse of some of the party's ambitious prospects who have already started planting seeds for a potential presidential bid. It is far too early for a shortlist of prospective candidates, but nearly a dozen mayors, governors and members of Congress did little to hide their aspirations. Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland kept a bustling schedule here this week…Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles could barely pass a television camera — or an influential Democrat from an early-voting state — without stopping…And Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr…invited a few prominent Democratic officials from battleground states to join him in his skybox high at the convention hall…Senators Mark Warner of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York were among the Democrats making the rounds here, along with Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark drew praise.” Jeff Zeleny in The New York Times.

BROOKS: The Democratic upper hand. “Over the past two weeks, I've enjoyed a grand tour of solipsism. I've been to two party conventions filled with people who think all of America is just like them. In Tampa, Fla., the Republicans talked as if everybody in America has started a small business or wants to…The Republicans' political problem is that most Americans don't presently want every aspect of life to look like the market…The Democrats rally around a different sort of ideal…The big rise in this life is not a move up in economic class. It's a move up in social status — from a life where one's conditions and lifestyle are imposed on you to a life in which you get to choose your own lifestyle…One of the striking features of the Democratic convention was that during the hours between 7 and 10 o'clock, when the party was appealing to its own activists, the social issues overshadowed the economic ones…Their second political problem is that the Democratic Party is inert. The party spent the years from the New Deal until Obamacare constructing a welfare state. That project is now finished, and today the party is dedicated to defending government in all its forms. This is a party with a protective agenda, not a change agenda.” David Brooks in The New York Times.

KRUGMAN: Why ‘four more years’ will be a better four. “[I]s the mess really getting cleaned up? The answer, I would argue, is yes. The next four years are likely to be much better than the last four years…The forces that have been holding the economy back seem likely to fade away in the years ahead. Housing starts have been at extremely low levels for years, so the overhang of excess construction from the bubble years is long past -- and it looks as if a housing recovery has already begun. Household debt is still high by historical standards, but the ratio of debt to G.D.P. is way down from its peak, setting the stage for stronger consumer demand looking forward…[Business investment] has actually been recovering rapidly since late 2009, and there's every reason to expect it to keep rising as businesses see rising demand for their products.” Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

FIRESTONE: Joe Biden, an underrated talent. “[T]he vice president is an expert in the art of overcoming ridicule and using low expectations to his advantage. In his convention speech tonight, he contrasted his father's humbling experience in the auto industry with that of the Romney family…People who thought Mr. Biden was little more than a comic sidekick to the president got a better look at the man tonight, witnessing a vice president who made a passionate and surprisingly effective case for his boss. The speech had its sentimental moments, and the occasional over-hearty platitude, but he made his argument in the appealing and populist way that often connects Mr. Biden with middle-class crowds. Better than most speakers at the convention, he refuted the contemptuous Republican assertion that Democrats are constantly on the lookout for government handouts. People who need government help for a college loan or job training aren't trying to become dependent, he said, they are seeking their own path out of dependency.” David Firestone in The New York Times.

DIONNE: Give Joe his due. “Biden was effective, and at times powerful, speaking as a witness who watched Obama up close. And because of his reputation for saying what's on his mind, which has often gotten him into trouble, he has a kind of credibility that doesn't come automatically to those who are always, always on message. Biden has a gut understanding of white working class and less affluent middle class voters whom Obama needs because, basically, that's where Biden comes from.” E. J. Dionne in The Washington Post.

Putin has also waded into the U.S. presidential election, saying in an interview timed for his arrival in Vladivostok that it would be easier to reach a deal on the controversial U.S. plans for a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe if President Barack Obama is reelected. He described Obama as an "honest man" and criticized Mitt Romney's aggressive rhetoric on Russia, saying, "such behavior on the international arena is the same as using nationalism and segregation as tools of U.S. domestic policy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/wo..._r=1&ref=world

[Count Bobulescu]

BOB WOODWARD pulls back the curtain on the sourcing for one of the juiciest nuggets in his new book out Tuesday, "The Price of Politics," covering the collapse of last year's grand-bargain talks. The WashPost's Steve Luxenberg, working from an early copy of the book, reported that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "are portrayed as impatient with [Obama].

"As the final details of the 2009 stimulus package were being worked out on Capitol Hill, Obama phoned the speaker's office to exhort the troops. Pelosi put the president on speakerphone so everyone could hear. 'Warming to his subject, he continued with an uplifting speech,' Woodward writes. 'Pelosi reached over and pressed the mute button. They could hear Obama, but now he couldn't hear them. The president continued speaking, his disembodied voice filling the room, and the two leaders got back to the hard numbers.'"

--WE ASKED LEADER PELOSI about Woodward's account. She insisted: "[T]hat didn't happen. ... First of all, whatever friendship you may have with an individual, when the president of the United States is having a conversation with the Speaker of the House and the leader in the Senate, ... it's a formal situation; it's history. Every call is history. ... [M]ostly, I clear the room when I'm talking to the president. I don't want anybody hearing one side of a [conversation]. I clear the room and then I take notes ...

"[T]he president is not a person who's long on the phone ... [I]f we're going to have a small-talk conversation, that will be another conversation. But [if] there is an official purpose, ... when he's finished, it's over. [Laughter.] He stops listening long before you stopped talking. [Laughter.] So, I don't even have any idea of where they could ever have gotten that ... [It would have been so] disrespectful and ... I viewed every one of those calls ... as history. It wasn't Nancy and Barack. It was the president of the United States and the Speaker of the House."

--WOODWARD emails : "The muting incident was called 'the Speakerphone episode' in the White House. From a taped background interview for 'The Price of Politics' with a senior Obama administration official who was in the room when this occurred: 'There was a moment in Pelosi's office during the Recovery Act where we were to get the end game, trying to negotiate. And the president called and was on a speakerphone, which Pelosi muted ... The president was speaking -- called in, was at like a pretty high level, like we really need to ... Recovery Act is important, the economy is falling off the cliff ... muting the speakerphone so that he couldn't hear them talking. But I was in the room." $16.81 on Amazon http://amzn.to/RWMTIz

--N.Y. TIMES review today is stripped across the top of "The Arts" section - "Behind the Scenes, the Bloodiest Beltway Battle," by Michiko Kakutani, who calls the book "depressing": "Mr. Woodward writes that 'the debt-limit crisis was a time of peril for the United States, its economy and its place in the global financial order' and that 'neither President Obama nor Speaker Boehner handled it particularly well' ...

"His harshest words are reserved for Mr. Obama: 'It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition. But presidents work their will - or should work their will - on the important matters of national business. There is occasional discussion in this book about Presidents Reagan and Clinton, what they did or would have done. Open as both are to serious criticism, they nonetheless largely worked their will. Obama has not. The mission of stabilizing and improving the economy is incomplete.'" http://nyti.ms/TuHttZ

ANN ROMNEY joins MITT ROMNEY for part of the "Meet the Press" interview airing tomorrow. From an NBC release this a.m.: This marks Gov. Romney's first appearance on 'Meet the Press' [since] December 13, 2009."

NIELSEN: "Closing Night of Democratic National Convention Draws 35.7 million Viewers," off from 38.4 million for final night in '08. http://bit.ly/Q5SaRl

--"Final Night of Republican National Convention Draws 30.3 million Viewers," off from 38.9 in '08. http://bit.ly/OhIK6s

FASCINATING AIR FORCE ONE POOL REPORT by Stephen Collinson, AFP White House Correspondent : "After the gaggle and before landing in Portsmouth [N.H.], a senior administration official came back to the press cabin to talk on background about the response to the president's speech ... 'We think we had a terrific convention. We think it is going to help with turnout, we think it is going to help really frame this election as a choice. We think it also puts in perspective the economy we inherited where we are and where we need to go. You compare that to the Republicans, who I think probably had an easier task. They are a challenger they are making a case for so called change. We think they got very little out of it. ... We do not think they advanced the ball. ... We think the Republicans came limping out of Tampa.'

"The official said the campaign conducted research on the various speeches 'and I think the American people responded very well to the president's speech.' 'They, first of all, found it to be optimistic, they found it to be credible in terms of his ideas and goals that would help the economy.' He said the electorate also approved of the foreign policy sectors of the speech. 'We think that swing voters in this election responded well to the president's speech. Our sense is that they responded better than to his speech in 2008 in terms of its impact. ... We think that the Republican convention was very disjointed. We think this had a flow to it' ...

JOHN HEILEMANN column in New York mag says Obama's convention speech yielded "a result that for Obama is as unusual as a moment of self-doubt: lukewarm and even bad reviews. ... [T]he speech paid a price for deviating from the loftiness and lyricism typical of big-stage Obama orations. It also suffered by comparison ... to the pyrotechnic performance of his predecessor Bill Clinton the previous night. ... In some areas, ... it makes more sense for Clinton to do the talking -- welfare reform preeminent among them.

For weeks, Team Romney has been pounding Obama for allegedly 'gutting' the law that Clinton passed in the nineties by 'dropping work requirements.' The ads, which featured images of WJC, have plainly been gaining traction with the working- and middle-class white voters whom the Republican ticket must carry by vast margins to have any hope of winning. In his Charlotte speech, however, Clinton decimated the ads with as much force as he could muster. 'This is personal to me,' he said. 'The claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true'

"For Romney-Ryan, Clinton's engagement on this issue -- and more broadly, as he's made it clear he wants to hit the road extensively for Obama this fall -- is a nightmare. But it is one of their own creation. Had they not elevated Clinton in the first place, putting him in ads, using him as an example of the kind of 'good Democrat' that Obama definitively is not, 42's repudiations of the claims and his validation of 44 might have less purchase. Instead, Team Romney finds itself defenseless, unable to defang the Big Dog, even as Obama counts his lucky stars that the old hound is off the leash." http://bit.ly/NShqMj

THE AD CRUSH - AP's Beth Fouhy: "Together, the [American] Crossroads groups spent about $66 million on ads through the end of August. Of that, $58 million came from Crossroads GPS, which is organized as a social welfare group under tax laws and thus does not have to disclose its donors. [The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity], which also does not disclose its donors, spent $35.2 million during that time. The Obama campaign spent $166 million on ads through Aug. 30, compared with $74 million by the Romney campaign and $22 million by the Republican National Committee. ...

"Romney and the independent groups spent $245 million on ads through the end of August while Obama and his allies spent $188 million, according to information from media buyers provided to The Associated Press. Obama's team front-loaded its ad spending in the spring, but Republicans caught up in June and began outspending Obama by mid-July, often by a 2-1 margin. Republicans abandoned their efforts in Michigan and Pennsylvania after hoping to make those Democratic-leaning states competitive for Romney. ... Both sides are looking at Wisconsin as a potential new battleground."

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: "Paul Ryan to begin debate prep on Sunday in Oregon," by WashPost's Felicia Sonmez in San Ramon, Calif .: "Ryan will take a day off the campaign trail on Sunday to huddle with advisers in the Portland, Ore., area for his first full day of debate prep ... The first session will take place in Oregon because that's where Ryan will end up this weekend as he concludes a western campaign swing ... The full day of debate prep - which is expected to be broken up by a brief pause to watch the Green Bay Packers game - will focus on likely debate topics and questions rather than serve as a mock debate. ... Last Sunday, in his hometown of Janesville, Wis., Ryan watched a tape of Biden's 2008 vice-presidential debate ...

"[A]ides say that soon his brown leather briefcase ... is likely to be replaced by a backpack so he can better hold all of his materials. While Ryan is expected to increasingly devote full days to debate prep, he will still likely keep to his practice of spending Sundays at home with his family in Janesville. Like ... Romney, ... Ryan is expected to buckle down for a 'debate camp' ... before the Oct. 11 debate ... The campaign has not [said] who will play ... Biden in Ryan's debate prep." http://wapo.st/TusTmm

TOP STORY - "Analysis: Weak jobs report delivers blow to Obama," by AP's Tom Raum : "Just 96,000 new jobs were created in August, sharply down from the revised July number of 141,000 and below the threshold of 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs needed each month just to keep pace with working-age population growth. ... Even though the president likes to talk about recent private-sector job growth - for 30 consecutive months now, as he noted Friday in a campaign stop in New Hampshire - there are still 261,000 fewer people employed today than when he was sworn in. The jobless rate then was 7.9 percent. It hasn't been below 8 percent since. ... Friday's jobs report ... increases the political pressure on [Obama's] campaign in battleground states with unemployment rates even higher than the national average.

"Nevada ... has a 12 percent jobless rate, North Carolina has 9.6 percent, Michigan 9 percent, Florida 8.8 percent and Colorado 8.3 percent. Those state figures are all for July, the most recent month available. ... Both Obama and Romney campaigned Friday in battleground states with better-then-average jobs numbers. Unemployment in New Hampshire in July was 5.4 percent and in Iowa, 5.3 percent. Other battleground states in this category are Virginia, at 5.9 percent; Ohio at 7.2 percent, Wisconsin at 7.3 percent and Pennsylvania at 7.9 percent. Expect both campaigns to redouble their efforts and spending in the higher unemployment states. ...

"Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University [said:] 'It took 10 years to get out of the Great Depression.'" http://bo.st/P3umvC

--Reuters' Lucia Mutikani: "While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent, it was only because many Americans gave up the hunt for work. The survey of households from which the jobless rate is derived actually showed a decline in employment for a second straight month. ...

"'The economy is crawling up the down escalator and today's report can only give ammunition to the activist members of the Fed board to loosen monetary policy further next week,' said Patrick O'Keefe, head of economic research at J.H. Cohn in Roseland, New Jersey. ... The weakness in the jobs market last month was virtually across the board, with average hourly earnings slipping and manufacturing -- the star of the recovery from the 2007-09 recession -- shedding jobs for the first time in nearly a year."

--ROMNEY CAMPAIGN, "August jobs report by the numbers": "23,136,000: The Number Of Americans Who Are Unemployed, Underemployed, Or Have Stopped Looking For Work ... 368,000: Workers That Dropped Out Of The Labor Force In August ... 15,000: Manufacturing Jobs Lost In August ... 1981: The Last Time The Labor Force Participation Rate Was At Its Current Level Of 63.5 Percent." http://mi.tt/QnT2lX

--MICHAEL GRUNWALD's fascinating "The NEW New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era," about the lasting impact of the stimulus, hits the N.Y. Times bestseller list tomorrow AND the following week.

[Count Bobulescu]

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

BULLETIN - "State of the race: Advantage, Obama," by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen: "President Obama heads out of the national political conventions with a much clearer path to winning, top advisers to Mitt Romney privately concede. Romney advisers, while pleasantly surprised by Obama's lackluster prime-time performance, said the post-convention bounce they hoped for fell well short of expectations and privately lament that state-by-state polling numbers - most glaringly in Ohio - are working in the president's favor. ...

"Three officials intimately involved in the GOP campaign said Ohio leans clearly in Obama's favor now ... 'Our problems are Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire,' a top [Romney] official said. 'Our opportunities are Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado. We can't trade our problems for our opportunities and win the presidency. If we trade our problems for our opportunities, we lose.' ...
"[Romney strategist Stuart] Stevens said Romney remains unfazed by the hand-wringing among Republicans and staff. 'We're a very patient campaign,' Stevens said. 'We're the campaign that couldn't break 25 percent [in the primaries]. We just have tremendous confidence in the governor's ability to talk to people in a way that resonates. Very steady, very confident.'" http://politi.co/Q7d9De


SNEAK PEEK - JUST WORDS? During a "Meet the Press" interview taped Friday and yesterday, moderator David Gregory asked Romney: "Let me turn to foreign policy ... The Weekly Standard took you to task in your convention speech for not mentioning the war in Afghanistan one time. Was that a mistake, with so much sacrifice in two wars over the period of this last decade?"

ROMNEY: "You know, I find it interesting that people are curious about mentioning words in a speech as opposed to policy. And so I went to the American Legion the day before I gave that speech."

GREGORY: "You weren't talking to tens of millions of people, Governor, when you went to the American Legion."

ROMNEY: "You know, what I've found is that wherever I go, I am speaking to tens of millions of people. Everything I say is picked up by you and by others, and that's the way it ought to be. So I went to the American Legion and spoke with our veterans there, and described my policy as it relates to Afghanistan and other foreign policy and our military. I've been to Afghanistan, and the members of our troops know of my commitment to Afghanistan and to the effort that's going on there. I have some differences on policy with the president. I happen to think those are more important than what word I mention in each speech."

ROMNEY'S PREVIOUS ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION, to Fox's Bret Baier on Friday: "I only regret you're repeating it day in, day out. [Laughter] ... When you give a speech, you don't go through a laundry list. You talk about the things that you think are important and I describe, in my speech, my commitment to a strong military ... And I didn't use the word 'troops.' I used the word 'military.' I think [chuckles] they refer to the same thing. ... I also spoke to the VFW the week before. So I think our American military understands that I'm fully supportive of their effort."

FACTS OF LIFE: Gov. Romney has now whiffed on two chances to try to get on the right side of a vulnerability that Team Obama will continue to try to exploit. What we would have said, rather than quibbling with the question or coverage: "Nothing is more important than our troops." That's it. Just keep sayin' it, and folks will quit asking. Also, if you want to be commander-in-chief, it's not "their effort," it's "our effort."

FIRST LOOK - ANYBODY WHO FOLLOWS POLITICS WILL DEVOUR THIS BOOK, OUT TUE. - "The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns," by Sasha Issenberg (Slate columnist, Washington correspondent for Monocle, former Boston Globe national political reporter), on the analytical revolution driving the Obama campaign, largely invisible to the press. " A passage about Obama '08 from Chapter 9, "Models and the Matrix":

"

After the algorithms worked through the new round of weekly IDs [polling-style calls to identify voters' preferences], they would drop a new set of support and turnout scores on every voter's record in the ... [database], each of them represented as a percentage probability. ... [Microtargeting consultant Ken] Strasma was able to see which voters were moving between candidates. Eventually they had a large enough sample of those who changed from McCain to Obama, and vice versa, that the campaign was able to create a model of these voters they called 'shifters.' It allowed the campaign to refine its category of 'undecided,' a catch-all description that long frustrated political scientists and psychologists because it was applied equally to voters who hadn't made up their minds, weren't paying attention, were trying to weigh competing values, or were simply unwilling to share with a stranger ... Someone who was undecided in June was probably a very different type of voter than one who was undecided in October.

"Using algorithms to find other undecided voters who looked like shifters (and determine which direction they were likely to go) would help the Obama campaign know which ones were worth targeting, and when to do so. By the time of the Republican convention in early September, the Obama campaign was placing well over 100,000 paid ID calls a week nationwide, with all the data feeding into Strasma's computers. When McCain picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, Obama's strategists were befuddled: they thought the Republican had been gaining traction by highlighting Obama's thin résumé, and now seemed to be sacrificing that argument by putting forward their own neophyte.

"But one week after the Republican convention , Strasma saw the first sign that McCain's move might be paying off when the first round of post-Palin IDs came back from phone banks. People were identifying themselves as pro-McCain at a higher rate their scores suggested they should have been. Strasma bore down into the numbers, and saw the phenomenon particularly strong among women. Campaign strategists worried that McCain and Palin, running as 'two mavericks,' may have been proving themselves successful at seizing Obama's themes of change and reform. When the next round of IDs came in, two weeks after the Palin's nomination, the IDs told a different story. The models had begun to integrate the increased levels of support for McCain's ticket, but now the IDs were heading in the other direction, underperforming the scores, especially among Republican women. ...

"The disconnect ... suggested that Palin's selection had offered little more than a temporary bump, as opposed to the permanent boost that McCain's advisers had anticipated. 'She ended up being a sugar high for them,' says [Obama direct-mail tactician Pete] Giangreco ... That eventually became conventional wisdom, ... but Strasma saw it well ahead of the curve ... 'You would see things faster than the polling would come back,' says [Obama new-media field director Judith] Freeman. Eventually the campaign was able to develop a modeling score for the action of shifting, predicting not only what views a voter had but individual susceptibility to changing them at a given point ... Strasma believed that this predictive modeling gave Obama's staff the tools of the fortune-teller. 'We determined that, down the line, they were going to break for us ... We knew who these people were going to vote for before they decided.'" $17.02 on Amazon http://amzn.to/P16MPQ ... www.thevictorylab.com

Five Crucial Factors to Watch, Just 58 Days From the Election

Electoral Map

The roster of battleground states has not changed much, but one that Republicans had dearly hoped to put in play appears to have broken decisively: Pennsylvania. Mr. Romney spent time and money in the state, which voted Democratic in the last five presidential elections, but Republican strategists now say it seems out of reach.

Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes and is home to Mr. Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, may offer Mr. Romney the best chance to expand his options. Republicans have not won there since 1984, despite fighting hard in almost every election. Wisconsin was not one of the eight states where the Romney campaign placed its first flight of general election ads late last week, but one party strategist said, “Keep watching.”

Debates

In a race that has featured little significant movement between the candidates, the three presidential debates this fall are taking on even greater importance.

Ads and Messages

After spending the spring and summer trying to turn Mr. Romney’s success as a business executive from a positive to a negative, characterizing him as uncaring about the middle class, Mr. Obama’s aides and allies intend to graft their portrayal onto specific policy areas.

They suggested that one attack, building on the president’s argument that Mr. Romney intends essentially to privatize Medicare, would contend that the Republican ticket’s next target would be another immensely popular program, Social Security.

Ballots

There is one factor in the campaign that has yet to get much attention but could influence the outcome: third-party candidacies in many states, most notably that of former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee.
Mr. Johnson, who argued for free markets, fewer wars and the legalization of marijuana during his brief run for the 2012 Republican nomination, hardly shows up in polls. But he is on the ballot in more than three dozen states and is trying for more.

Money

For the first time since the advent of public financing after Watergate, neither major-party candidate will accept matching funds, forcing both to keep raising money right up until Election Day. That means Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have to build substantial room into their schedules for fund-raising, including more time than they would like traveling to places that are not competitive politically but are flush with wealthy donors, starting with New York and Los Angeles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us...arge.html?_r=1


Buried in New York Times polling guru Nate Silver's latest blog post is a chart that should have Mitt Romney ordering out for some Xanax. The chart depicts Silver's statistical inferences from several multi-day tracking polls that include Thursday and Friday, the final day of the Democratic convention and the day after--in other words, the two days after Bill Clinton's barnburner of a speech. I'll explain below why I'd add one grain of salt to Silver's inferences, but first, here they are, in this chart's final column, which depicts the estimated swing in Obama's favor since Clinton's speech:


My two reasons for mild skepticism:

[1] I support Obama, and I'm a pessimist. OK, I admit that this reason isn't a paragon of rigor. So on to the second reason:

[2] As Silver himself emphasizes, there's a big challenge in interpreting multi-day tracking polls, because they don't release their day-by-day figures. So when, say, Obama's seven-day Gallup tracking number goes up for Friday (as it did), what that means is that the average Obama number for Sep. 1-7 is higher than the average Obama number for Aug. 31-Sep. 6. And the only highly granular thing you can infer for sure from that (if I understand this correctly, something that has a 78-percent chance of being the case) is that the Sep. 7 number was higher than the Aug. 31 number. And we can't say for sure what the Aug 31 number was, because, again, these polls don't release day-by-day numbers.

Here's the reason this matters: Obama's multi-day tracking numbers rose for Thursday, the day after Clinton's much-praised speech, and then reached an even higher level for Friday, the day after Obama's not-so-praised speech, and the day a weak jobs report came out. (These are the numbers released by the polling companies on Friday and Saturday, respectively.) It's tempting to look at those numbers and think, "Wow, Obama's numbers continued to rise immediately after his speech, and notwithstanding the weak jobs numbers." But, again, all we can say for sure is that his post-speech numbers were higher than his numbers had been a week earlier. (That's with the Gallup poll. Not all the tracking polls are 7-day--some are just 3-day--but the same type of uncertainty applies to all of them.)

So here's a scenario that, if I'm understanding this correctly, is entirely consistent with the data: Obama's numbers rose a lot on Thursday, after the Clinton speech, but then fell on Friday, after the Obama speech and the weak jobs numbers, though they didn't fall as low as they'd been some days earlier (7 days in the case of the Gallup poll, other periods for other polls). If that's what happened, then the convention bounce, as it currently stands, could be significantly less than the eight points suggested by that final column in Silver's chart.

So I would add my one grain of salt to this sentence of Silver's: "Despite a mediocre jobs report on Friday, there were no signs in the polls that Mr. Obama's bounce had immediately receded, as he gained further ground in the surveys that were released on Saturday [i.e., the surveys conducted through Friday]." True, there were no visible signs of slippage, but it's in the nature of these multi-day tracking polls that actual slippage could be concealed by numbers that keep rising.

[Update, 9/9, 11:20 a.m.: Adding strength to Silver's analysis--and sapping strength from my grain of salt--is the latest Rasmussen tracking poll, which came out this morning, after Silver's post, and includes Saturday polling numbers. It has Obama up by four percentage points, higher than the two percentage points of the previous day's Rasmussen poll. (And Rasmussen is a three-day tracking poll, so this latest number reflects entirely post-Clinton-speech findings.)]


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...-obama/262135/