Monday Miscellany and Open Thread

 

"Warning Sign" - Talking Heads

Sorry for goofing off all weekend.  I was trying to recharge the batteries a bit. 

- Some seemingly very good news from Ohio, the state that Romney simply cannot afford to lose.  Obama has maintained a small but steady polling lead in the Buckeye State throughout the summer and this poll by PPP has his lead at 5%.  More interestingly, the Romney camp seems to be suggesting that Obama is ahead by even more than that.  The story here is by Mike Allen, who certainly could be fairly described as the Village Idiot, but he is very well connected in Republican circles.

It will be interesting to see what the polls later in this week look like, now that the conventions are over and the terms of the debate staked out pretty starkly. 

I also see that Obama outraised Romney this month.  I have seen a lot of nervousness reflected on the Democratic side in comments about the Romney financial edge.  This should allay some of those.  I also continue to subscribe to the notion that there is a huge law of diminishing returns on these thirty second spots.  Living in DC, we are bombarded with ads intended for the northern Virginia audience and I feel like they just become background noise after a while. 

Must run and do the lawyer thing.  In the meantime, jump in. 

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

From the Allen/Vandehei piece:

Two officials intimately involved in the GOP campaign said Ohio leans clearly in Obama’s favor now, with a high single-digit edge, based on their internal tracking numbers of conservative groups.

A lead in the high single digits in Ohio? Barring some disaster out of the blue, this thing's over.

Romney can still win the presidency if he loses Ohio, but it’s extremely difficult.

And extremely unlikely. Romney's not going to lose Ohio, yet win Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina. Just not gonna happen.

Romney basically needs to sweep Florida, Virginia, and Ohio to win the election.

[oddjob]

Even North Carolina is very close (of course that's also in the wake of the DNC). It may not stay that way but if the election were held today it's not clear he'd win North Carolina, let alone any of the others.

[low-tech cyclist]

Both the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls have Obama up by 5 today.

The Rasmussen tracking poll is a 3-day tracker, and the +5 is for Fri-Sat-Sun polling, so it's entirely post-convention.

It's a bigger margin than it looks like, because Rasmussen, unlike most pollsters, has consistently shown Romney ahead over the past 4 months. So this is like Obama being up by 8 in a more unbiased poll.

The Gallup poll is a 7-day tracker. It had Obama up by 1 point before the Democratic convention began, and he is now up by 5. Only one day of pre-Democratic Convention polling numbers remains in the average, so either all or just about all of the convention bounce is in the Gallup numbers.

Still, this is as big a lead as Gallup has given Obama since the primaries ended. And given that no Presidential candidate has won the election by more than 8.5% since Reagan-Mondale, a 5% lead is damned good. Nate Silver's model currently gives Obama an 80.7% chance of victory.

[Linkmeister]

There is some weird news from Ohio, though:

"According to a PPP poll of likely Ohio voters, 15 percent of Republicans in Ohio think Romney is “more responsible” for bin Laden’s death than Obama, while 47 percent of Republicans are “not sure” whether Obama or Romney deserves more of the credit."

I have no words to describe how this makes me feel.

[oddjob]

Land of the free, home of the brave, and a center for fundamentalist ignorance and insanity.

[kathy a.]

well, that is pretty freakin' weird, linkmeister.

[nancy]

I have no words to describe how this makes me feel.

I grew up there and I know exactly how this makes me feel: plus ça change...

[kathy a.]

ok, silver lining. maybe some of those 47% (of republicans, not the general citizenry) who aren't sure will look it up? or notice that even the romney camp is not claiming OBL, because romney was noplace near any decisionmaking on this thing?

[nancy]

Oddjob, I'm not sure that it is fundamentalism *fundamentally* at work in Ohio. My sense is that the place has never recovered from being Crossroads Central for no-shirt-no-shoes-no-service, goddamned hippies, 60's era Silent Majority, young-person-resenting, Red White Blue America. Racism was not much of a motivating force surprisingly.

I would have described it as an entire state with a "town and gown" problem, with imaginary 'radical' liberals [like our Chief Community Organizer] making the locals forever-pissy. What occurred at Kent State was mostly about class resentments and that it happened in Ohio didn't surprise.

That PPP poll 15% -- understandable -- the USA! USA! team chant means it must have been Mittster's GOP what got her done. Right? The 47% "not sure" [hello?] people of that poll are more worrisome. Yikes squared.

[beckya57]

Any of you ever check out Jon Chait's "Life in Ohio, a Continuing Series"? It's a periodic chronicle of weird stories out of Ohio that he puts on his blog at New York Magazine. It's pretty funny--and bizarre.

[low-tech cyclist]

"What occurred at Kent State was mostly about class resentments and that it happened in Ohio didn't surprise."

nancy - class resentments? All I can say is, wow. I mean, Kent State wasn't exactly Swarthmore. Or, closer to home, it wasn't exactly Oberlin or even Kenyon.

[Linkmeister]

Maybe students at Kent State had II-S deferments and the kids the same age in the Nat'l Guard had none; hence resentment?

I don't know, I'm guessing.

[nancy]

L-t c. Class resentment, college deferment-style, qua -- 'You' lucky and lazy state university brats get to waste time, 'go' to classes, dance and drink the weekends away, summer backpack in Europe, get high without consequence and do serial bedhopping to boot. 'We' get to avoid shipping out to Vietnam by signing on with the Guard (a needed part-time job) and its myriad crappy commitments, which include being diminished and dehumanized by our near-peers. Hey, also get to sport a visible nasty buzzcut during the age of Aquarius. And be called wannabe-killers. Peace. Love. Didn't think so.

It was a fraught situation all around.

Class resentment is more finely apportioned than I think we always keep in mind. But more to the point. What do these Ohioans think Mitt Romney has been up to all these years for heaven's sake. He sure as hell hasn't clue one about their lives on the ground. Then or now.

Veered subject. Sorry. Happens.

[low-tech cyclist]

Linkmeister - they got rid of the student deferments in 1967, and class resentment definitely fueled the politics behind that one. The end of the student deferments has often been credited with causing student protests against the war to go widespread.

The absence of student deferments, however, basically meant that many upper middle class parents hired lawyers who knew how to play the deferment game, so the end of student deferments certainly made less difference in terms of who served and who didn't than it should have.

[low-tech cyclist]

Back to the polls, we've had two come out last night: a CNN poll that showed Obama up nationally by 8 among registered voters and 6 among likely voters, and a WaPo/ABC poll that showed him up by 6 among registered voters, but by only 1 among likely voters.

These differences could easily be explained both by the polls' margins of error, and by differing likely voter screens.

The most interesting thing about the WaPo poll was that it showed Obama up by 54-40 among registered voters in the 8 states that they regard as tossups - presumably the same 8 states that everyone's throwing their money at.

File this result in the 'too good to be true' folder. Given that their entire national sample was 826 registered voters, their tossup state sample had to be on the order of 160 RVs, which would get a margin of error of ~8%. So what that result really says is that Obama is somewhere between roughly even with Romney, and 30 points ahead, in the tossup states.

[paula]

Nancy---great analysis. I don't understand why those aging National Guardies don't resent the fact that Mitt got a deferment for marketing Mormonism in France, while they served their country. At the very least, the college students contributed something to their community through their rents, beer purchases, etc. He took his contributions offshore. (So what else is new?) How does all that add up to Mitt being so damn patriotic?

[kathy a.]

l-tc -- student deferments did not end in 1967; they were modified to end after completion of a 4 year degree or on the 24th birthday. so, an expiration date was installed.

in about 1966, they started administering a draft deferment "test," meant to tell genuine students from slackers who did not want to go to war. here is an account of testing (and student protests) at oberlin.

also in 1966, mcnamara's "project 100,000" was created, lowering enlistment standards to increase the number of enlistees without endangering deferments. the war was ramping up at that time. the project was sold as a social program to lift the prospects of the less fortunate (phrases like "dark underbelly" and "urban youth" were used), but these enlistees could not learn many skilled jobs. they had much higher casualty rates, and much worse outcomes if they made it back from the war. the project was eventually abandoned as a failure.

the shooting at kent state was in 1970, so things had been simmering for a good while.

[kathy a.]

another lost comment. sigh.

here is molly ivins' "a short story about the vietnam war memorial , in which she says, " there were no good choices in those years."

[paula]

Attorneys: http://t.co/lh6mRqE7 This sounds nuts to me. Comments?

Also, this from pourmecoffee:
Romney finally introduced himself to American people and is now losing. This happened to me with girls in high school and feels real bad.

David Brooks chimes in on Hanna Rosin's book on men and adaptability, which we discussed last week. Here's an excerpt:
Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores.
----
Following the analogy, let's hope women fare better in the new country than some of the immigrants nobody wants.

[Joe S]

Lot of red shirts here in Chicago and a huge turnout for the CTU strike. It appears the population is with the Chicago Teacher's Union. I'm hoping they can win one, and Rahm will learn to kick up at his hedge fund buddies and not down on teacher's unions.

[kathy a.]

good news, joe.

paula, i have reached my limit on NYT articles. but i'm hating the immigrants analogy. hating it. it diminishes everyone except the all-powerful wizard behind the curtain.

[kathy a.]

charles pierce on romneycare. worth the read. via balloon juice.

9/11 still seems so fresh that i can't read a lot about it without crying. but here's something decent about 9/11 and the drumbeat for cutting taxes for rich folk, and it makes me feel kinda hopeful. via, of all places, wapo.

[Sir Charles]

Hey guys.

I think on the National Guard/Kent State issue that you also have to factor in poorly disciplined, poorly trained, scared kids armed with live ammunition. Resentment certainly might have played a part, but I would imagine that the weird combination of power trip and fear that is common in people probably played a role.

My father, who was the veteran of dozens of protests and riots from the late 60s through the mid-70s had a basic rule of thumb. No National Guard. Not ever. Better to be outnumbered 10,000 to 800 than let the Guard lose on the streets.

[nancy]

" there were no good choices in those years." No there weren't.

I don't recall Molly's writing ever having made me weep before. That is one painful piece to read.

I also doubt we'll ever resolve our Vietnam era tensions with one another. They've been passed on in translated form to the GOP's next-up. None of these people has been in harm's way, nor are their children ever likely to be. James Wolcott summed Mitt up: mr fake tuff guy. There's a whole club of 'em out there. "Your kids, certainly not mine." Dirty work is always for the help of course.

[oddjob]

There's a whole club of 'em out there.

Just about all the leading neoconservatives are members.