"Can't Win" - Richard Thompson
- Last night I mused on the amazing hackery of right wingers, the way that they could shamelessly declare Romney the victor in a debate in which he clearly struggled. (See Drum on this theme as well.) Today I am struck by the overwheening optimism they seem to be feeling about their electoral prospects, which again, contrasts so markedly with the hand-wringing that characterizes so many on the liberal side of the aisle. I have to think that anyone trying to observe objectively the current state of the polls would, if offered a choice, pick Obama's hand as the one you want to play. It's by no means a sure thing, but the paths to victory and the possibility of overperformance (due to likely voter screens) clearly give Obama an advantage at the moment. What is strange is that there really is no recent history to suggest that Republicans should feel this sense of confidence. They have lost the popular vote in four of the last five presidential elections during which the Democratic candidates have polled a combined twenty million more votes than their Republican challengers. The Republicans have not cracked 300 electoral votes since 1988, while the Democrats have done so three times, with Gore and Kerry hitting 266 and 251 respectively in their losing efforts. In other words, Democrats have shown a far superior national coalition over the last twenty years in presidential elections than the GOP. And yet, the wingers crow and we worry. Interesting.
- Another thing that would really have me despairing were I a Republican is the fact that there appears to be almost zero chance of them taking control of the Senate, something I would have given you better than even odds on at the start of this year. And now, Richard Mourdock, the Todd Akin of Hoosierland, has stepped in it on rape and abortion. He has explained his opposition to a rape exception for abortion to his belief that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” One shakes one's head. Ruefully. It is actually beginning to appear that if all goes optimally well, the Democrats may actually add a seat or two to their Senate majority. If so, it would be an astonishing turnaround, aided immeasurably by the fact that the Republican Party is filled with insane people.
What say you?
And yet, the wingers crow and we worry. Interesting. It's the big difference in the risks and rewards attached to winning and losing.
Even the 29.7% chance that Nate Silver currently gives Romney is just way too big a chance that the GOP will have the opportunity to stop Obamacare in its tracks, cut a major chunk out of Medicaid, and voucherize Medicare.
Unlike the Bushies in their desire to privatize Social Security, this time they aren't going to give a good goddamn if the Dems give them any bipartisan cover or not.
While the wingers know that even if they lose, they'll still be able to tie Congress in knots for the next four years.
So if we win, we more or less get to preserve our past gains over the next few years, but if we lose, we could lose disastrously. But if they win, they get to sack and pillage the New Deal, and if they lose, they'll not lose very much.
In strictly game-theoretic terms, their side of the board is the one to be on. In terms of what's good and right, there's only one side of the board that a decent human being should be on, AFAIAC. And that's why we worry and they don't.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 23, 2012 at 11:34 PM
Should have included: if they win, we can wave goodbye to not only a woman's right to choose, but quite possibly legal access to hormonal contraceptives as well. If we win, Roe will likely remain in force, but they can continue to constrict access to abortions in many states.
All in all, this election is like a bet that we've got a 2/3 chance of winning, but if we win, the duck comes down and gives us $100, while if we lose, we lose the house, the car, and the retirement fund.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 24, 2012 at 08:41 AM
All in all, this election is like a bet that we've got a 2/3 chance of winning, but if we win, the duck comes down and gives us $100, while if we lose, we lose the house, the car, and the retirement fund.
Just about sums it up.
Posted by: jeanne marie | October 24, 2012 at 09:13 AM
I can't link to it yet because it's the front page headline in today's Boston Globe, but the story is an analysis pointing out that this time around it's quite possible that the popular vote winner will lose the electoral college.
Posted by: oddjob | October 24, 2012 at 09:38 AM
The Rape-publican Party. Without raping people Republicans would never have sex...
Posted by: Grung_e_Gene | October 24, 2012 at 10:05 AM
"I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
-Richard Mourdock, GOP candidate for U.S. Senator from Indiana (and the only Senate candidate that Romney's produced a commercial on behalf of)
If he didn't have a pretty good shot at winding up in the U.S. Senate, I'd just wonder what pathology someone must have to believe in the sort of God who is willing to have a woman raped in order to get one more baby started, when thousands of babies already get started every day.
Things being what they are, I can only hope that such remarks help the voters of Indiana conclude that this alleged human being needs to be kept away from any position of public responsibility and authority.
And it makes me feel better about having contributed to Joe Donnelly's campaign. I'm not sure what sort of guy Donnelly is, but even if he's well into Blue Dog territory, he's got to be miles better than Mourdock.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 24, 2012 at 10:44 AM
On a completely different subject, I really don't understand TPM's PollTracker. It shows Obama leading by only 2% in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the smallest lead any pollster currently gives to Obama in PA is 3%.
Since you can't average a bunch of leads of 3% or greater and come up with a 2% lead, they're not averaging.
Perhaps they're curve-fitting or something like that, but that includes an implicit momentum assumption, which would be bogus. The reason why you keep polling is that you don't know whether a candidate's support will keep moving in the same direction as it has been.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Clark Kent is going to leave the Daily Planet to become a blogger.
Posted by: oddjob | October 24, 2012 at 01:46 PM
don't mess with texas has apparently been extended to threatening criminal sanctions against UN poll watchers.
Posted by: kathy a. | October 24, 2012 at 05:00 PM
Blunt. From the Providence-Journal. An op-ed by a former Romney colleague who describes himself as well right of center.
Posted by: nancy | October 24, 2012 at 06:51 PM
nancy, that link made my day. (which probably says a lot about how not-great this day has been.)
via maddow, here's a whopper: obama has an advantage when women are in the fertile time of the month. this was based on "an internet survey of 275 women who were not taking hormonal contraception and had regular menstrual cycles. About 55% were in committed relationships, including marriage." there are not enough ways for me to call BS on this so-called study, speaking as a menopausal woman who is not on hormones, and who thinks a sample of 275 is pretty freaking pathetic a basis for such grand conclusions. (yeah, that puts me squarely in the "dried up hag" category, which only manages to piss me off even more. go figure.)
Posted by: kathy a. | October 24, 2012 at 07:00 PM
TNC on "pregnancy as labor".
Posted by: kathy a. | October 24, 2012 at 08:26 PM
kathy -- CNN removed the hormonal cycle-link story. Presto. I'm impressed. Next up and why not -- horoscopes, PMS, women and voting patterns. Crossed with a correlation of indigestion and traffic drive-time.
CNN is a bad joke.
Posted by: nancy | October 24, 2012 at 09:03 PM
wow. CNN did take it down.
but not to worry! for tonight's entertainment -- The Donald offers a gerbillion bazillion dollar$$$ to charity if the president coughs up school records and applications, his passport app, etc.
yawn. we're still waiting on mitty's tax returns, thanks, which are actually things that the non-birthers among us are interested to see.
Posted by: kathy a. | October 24, 2012 at 09:22 PM
I remember the arguments 40 years ago over the ERA, and remember hearing a lot of bullshit at the time about how women couldn't handle positions of responsibility because their hormones at certain times of the month might lead them to do whacked-out things.
I never thought we'd be seeing even a hint of that stuff nowadays. Good Lord almighty.
Of course, with the GOP fighting access to contraception, which most of us had also figured was an issue long dead and buried, I guess we shouldn't be too surprised at whatever crazy nonsense they come up with. The GOP (currently rallying around Mourdock, astoundingly enough) is a living demonstration that you can be pretty damned whacked-out without any hormonal explanation. And we really do need to keep their hands off the levers of power.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 25, 2012 at 06:05 AM
They've been fighting to keep the teaching of evolution out of public schools for over a century and they're still at that, too.
Posted by: oddjob | October 25, 2012 at 10:15 AM
(The "they" I was referring to was social conservatives.)
Posted by: oddjob | October 25, 2012 at 10:16 AM
Thanks for linking to that op-ed, nancy!
Sometimes blunt is the best way to put something.
Posted by: oddjob | October 25, 2012 at 10:24 AM
Wouldn't surprise me, given all the rhetoric from the right, to see their next social engineering projects become divorce restriction and finding ways to penalize women for out-of-wedlock childbirth. A Scarlet Letter Movement. I can imagine these guys throwing it all out there to see where it might lead. Romney/Ryan et al. bringing back "criminal conversation". Chattel laws . Six states still have the things on the books. Big in NC apparently. A google will introduce you to law firms which specialize in this particularly smarmy bit of misogyny.
I think TNC's "Pregnancy as Labor" ought to be required reading. Mitt Romney's repellent behavior as bishop toward the mother of four from his ward, whose pregnancy needed to be terminated in order to save her life, tells me all I need to know about the man. That was Mitt, the authoritarian bully at work -- not his Church.
Posted by: nancy | October 25, 2012 at 04:18 PM
Pass it along: November 6 is Take A Woman To Vote Day. Who are you taking? http://bit.ly/RYu5Kd
Posted by: paula | October 25, 2012 at 05:29 PM
I guess I spoke too soon. The project to penalize poor women with children is already underway in Pennsylvania. Have an additional baby? Sorry, no food stamp adjustment for you.
Food. For children. But, by all means, let's ax PP first. Then we can let children go hungry. Not starving, but hungry.
I will never understand this mindset. Being poor is exhausting. Did none of these people read any Dickens? Well, no they didn't...what a silly question. One gets the sense they'd all welcome the return of the orphanage "please sir, i want some more" gruel, and debtor's prison.
*****
Paula -- All done.
Posted by: nancy | October 25, 2012 at 06:41 PM
Hey guys. Another crazy day. Back from great Windsor Locks, CT for a cameo appearance in DC. Have to be up at 4:30 AM to head up to Philly again for an early meeting.
Hopefully will get to post in the afternoon on the incredibly high stakes in this election.
Posted by: Sir Charles | October 25, 2012 at 09:46 PM
Incredibly high stakes indeed: that's one of the things that drives me nuts about our wonderful media. You'd never get the sense from them of the scale of the consequences of this election. But in my lifetime, they've never been this high.
I've been trying to find the time to compose a letter to my in-laws about this. I've not tried to push them into voting one way or another before now, but it's not the time to hold back - especially since they live in Florida.
And my wife's family is a perfect illustration of the harm a Romney win would do, because the abolition of Obamacare, big Medicaid cuts, and the voucherization of Medicare would each do major harm to them. They would get hit by the proverbial 'perfect storm.'
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 26, 2012 at 09:03 AM
Did none of these people read any Dickens? Well, no they didn't...what a silly question.
No, of course not! They tune in to the Gospel According to Fox, which says that being poor means you collect welfare and unemployment and food stamps, while you sit around and do nothing all day.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 26, 2012 at 09:03 AM
Beyond a certain level an increasing financial sector harms the US economy.
Posted by: oddjob | October 26, 2012 at 10:29 AM
here's what they are reading: selections from the obama hater's book club.
Over the past four years, no less than 89 obsessively anti-Obama books have been published . . .. I’m not talking about cool statements of policy difference, but overheated and often unhinged screeds painting a picture of the president as a dangerous radical hell-bent on undermining the Republic by any means necessary. It is hate and hyper-partisan paranoia masquerading as high-minded patriotism.
Here’s the worst part—this steady drumbeat of incitement is having an impact on this presidential election because it has poisoned the well of civic discourse for many voters and those in their radius of damage. It has helped divide the nation beyond reason, distorting the president’s real record beyond all recognition.
Posted by: kathy a. | October 26, 2012 at 10:57 AM
And those who don't read the books, get the direct mail.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 26, 2012 at 03:09 PM
TNC one more time, this time on "Mourdock, Conception, and Theodicy."
Posted by: kathy a. | October 26, 2012 at 04:14 PM
the real mitt -- a guy so loyal that he still stands behind mr. "god intended rape pregnancies."
Posted by: kathy a. | October 26, 2012 at 08:48 PM
I am finding the reading of our current GOP candidate stances and pronunciamentos regarding the very idea and understanding of rape to be way beyond chilling. All of the violence and terror and fear of the act has been erased and abstracted in their thinking. It seems they've decided that rapes are mostly date-rape oopsies. Testosterone guy getting carried away at mixed signals. She-harlot deserving what comes her way. Baby blessings to be honored. By her.
Let's suppose Ann Romney had been forcibly and terrifyingly raped as a slightly pre-menopausal woman and had been impregnated. Are we really to believe that she would have been expected to bear and would have borne another child because of 'God's plans.' I scoff at that.
Posted by: nancy | October 26, 2012 at 09:04 PM
Sir C -- Forgot. Thanks for the Richard Thompson. I so luv him. I lost all of my Thompson CDs in a sleepy Saturday morning acquiescence to a "Can I sell this pile of stuff for a $1 each to the music store?" in order to do a trade, 15 some years ago. Never say "Yes, I guess so", as a sleepy parent. :)
Bon weekend all.
Posted by: nancy | October 26, 2012 at 09:46 PM