Month: September 2012

Eric Randall comes up with a novel way to highlight Mitt's campaign problems (as well as some overall media unoriginality) by collecting 99 unique headlines. A sampling:

52. “Mitt Romney’s class problem” – New York Post
53. “Romney’s Jamie Dimon Problem” – Salon
54. “Romney’s Wealth Problem” – The American Prospect
55. “Mitt Romney’s People Problem” – The Washington Post
56. “Mitt Romney has a personal problem” – The Washington Post
57. “Mitt Romney’s Empathy Problem” – The New Yorker
58. “Mitt Romney’s Likeability Problem” – Alaska Dispatch
59. “Romney’s relatability problem …” – Los Angeles Times
60. “Romney’s Commander-in-Chief Problem” – Political Wire

(Hat tip: Daily What)

Ah how the Romneyites believed that with the struggling global economy and anemic recovery in the US, they had the perfect slogan for victory: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" It's straight from the Reagan playbook, like their tax cuts and defense increases. It worked in 1980 so why isn't it working now? Sargent claims vindication. Brownstein explains:

That question divides likely voters almost exactly in thirds: in the poll, 31 percent say they are better off than four years ago, while 34 percent say they are worse off and 34 percent say they are about the same. Romney, predictably, wins more than four-fifths of voters who say they are worse off; the president, equally unsurprisingly, attracts almost nine in 10 of those who consider themselves better off.

Crucially, though, Obama holds a commanding 57 percent to 34 percent advantage among those who say their finances are unchanged. One reason for that critical tilt in his direction: Voters who say their finances are unchanged also say, by a resounding 53 percent to 33 percent margin, that they believe the country has been better off over these past four years because Obama, rather than another candidate, won in 2008. Overall, 48 percent say they believe the country is better off because Obama won in 2008, while 41 percent say the nation would be in a stronger position today if another candidate had won.

The Reagan question may help Obama a smidgen. If that's the core argument of Romney, it's no wonder he's losing. And if he just gives us more platitudes in the debate about one guy loving government and Europe and one guy loving freedom and America, well he really doesn't think he can convince us, can he?

Ask Christopher Ryan Anything

[Updated with many more questions submitted by readers]

The Dish has extensively debated Ryan's Sex At Dawn and its provocative findings on nonmonogamy. From Dan Savage's blurb:

Sex At Dawn is the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948. Want to understand why men married to supermodels cheat? Why so many marriages are sexless? Why paternity tests often reveal that the guy whose name is on the birth certificate isn’t the kid’s biological father? Go and buy a copy of Sex At Dawn. Anyone who’s ever struggled with monogamy—which, if people were honest, would be everyone—needs to read this book.

To submit a question for Christopher, simply enter it into the field at the top of the Urtak poll (ignore the "YES or NO question" aspect and simply enter any open-ended question). We primed the poll with questions you can vote on right away – click "Yes" if you have a strong interest in seeing him answer the question or "No" if you don't particularly care. We will air his responses soon. Thanks to everyone for participating.

An overview of US history according to Republicans:

1500s: The American Revolutionary War begins: "The reason we fought the revolution in the sixteenth century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown."—Rick Perry

1607: First welfare state collapses: "Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow."—Dick Armey

1619-1808: Africans set sail for America in search of freedom: "Other than Native Americans, who were here, all of us have the same story."—Michele Bachmann

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. Previous videos of TNC here and here. “Ask Anything” archive here.

"Watching George Romney run for the presidency was like watching a duck try to make love to a football," – former Governor Jim Rhodes of Ohio.

Nate Cohn discounts Gallup's national poll, which shows a tied race:

The poll most likely to scream “headline” is Gallup, which is so far out of line from the other registered voter surveys that I don’t even know what to say about it. Obama leads by about 7 points among registered voters, and, no, the methodological criticisms you’ve heard don’t explain a gap of that magnitude. As Harry Enten of the Guardian (@ForecasterEnten) tweeted today, we would probably blow this off as a clear outlier if it was named something other than Gallup.

But while they have a long history, they haven’t exactly been the most accurate survey in recent years (showing a tied race in 2004 and an 11 point Obama lead in 2008), so there’s just not much cause to assume they’re better than the consensus of other polls, at least that I'm aware of. And Gallup’s case for a tight race was undermined by their traditional partner, Rasmussen, which showed Obama building a 3 point lead once leaners were included. It’s hard to see how Obama could lead by 3 points in a poll weighted to a Republican electorate, but it’s clear that Gallup is completely alone in showing a tied race (at least until Rasmussen returns to showing Romney up 3, or whatever). At the moment, Gallup stands entirely alone. The other trackers, let alone the less regular state and national polls, all show a clear Obama lead at or above post-DNC levels.

Earlier polling crack here.

Eli Lake investigates:

[T]here is mounting evidence that the White House’s initial portrayal of the attacks as a mere outgrowth of protest was incorrect—or, at the very least, incomplete. The administration’s story itself has recently begun to shift, with Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, telling Congress on Wednesday that the attackers may have had links to al Qaeda and Carney characterizing the incident as a “terrorist attack.” (Hillary Clinton announced on Thursday that she was putting together a panel to look into the incident.)

But other indications that the White House’s early narrative was faulty are also beginning to emerge. One current U.S. intelligence officer working on the investigation into the incident told The Daily Beast that the attackers had staked out and monitored the U.S. consulate in Benghazi before the attack, a move that suggests pre-planning.

What’s more, two U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the intelligence community is currently analyzing an intercept between a Libyan politician whose sympathies are with al Qaeda and the Libyan militia known as the February 17 Brigade—which had been charged with providing local security to the consulate. In the intercept, the Libyan politician apparently asks an officer in the brigade to have his men stand down for a pending attack—another piece of evidence implying the violence was planned in advance. (Plenty of Libyans, of course, did try to protect the consulate. “Many of those Libyans died in the gunfight fighting off the attackers,” one of the officials said. “But there were some bad apples there as well.”)

Madrid, Spain, 2.03 pm

Andrew Rotherham reviews an unusual marketplace:

You won’t get rich as a teacher, right? That’s no longer true for a small but growing number of educators who are making big bucks selling their lesson plans online. On a peer-to-peer site called TeachersPayTeachers (TPT), Georgia kindergarten teacher Deanna Jump has earned more than $1 million selling lesson plans — with names like "Colorful Cats Math, Science and Literacy Fun!" — for about $9 a pop. Since the site launched in 2006, 26 teachers have each made more than $100,000 on TPT, which takes a 15% commission on most sales. In August, Jump became the first on TPT to reach $1 million. Her success has been aided by the thousands of followers of her personal blog who get notified each time she retails a new lesson.