Month: September 2012

Did Romney Just Lose The Election? Ctd

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From the most right-wing columnist in the Tory paper, the Telegraph:

Romney video: I think Obama just won the election. When was the last time a president fighting for re-election was handed such a gift? Remind me, someone: how did the GOP end up with this idiot as their candidate?

Another British right-winger, Tim Stanley:

Sure, Romney’s quote might contain a grain of truth. But it’s also cruel and fatalistic. The American Dream is rooted in the hope that someday we’ll all be rich enough to pay lots of tax (or own a bank account in the Caymans). To suggest that some folks will stick with their entitlements forever – that’s un-American. And Mitt makes it so much worse by suggesting that he doesn’t care about them, either: “My job is not to worry about those people.”

On this side of the Atlantic, partisanship is, for the moment, holding back the panic. Allahpundit thinks it will all blow over:

This was recorded awhile back at a fundraiser, just like Obama’s infamous “bitter/clinger” comments in 2008. Remember how big that blew up? That’s how we ended up with President McCain.

The difference is that Obama was empathizing with the white working class’s economic plight, not blaming it on them and not caring about them. Patterico:

Those who see themselves as sucking on the government teat — a much smaller group, by the way, than the group that actually is sucking on the government teat — will be offended and won’t vote for Romney. Guess what? They weren’t going to anyway. Independents may be put off by Romney’s seemingly callous attitude towards the 47 percent of people who don’t pay income tax. He’s going to have to work to come back from this. But it’s hardly the end of the world. Don’t be a sucker for the Big Media spin.

I don’t think the videos need any spin. They are self-explanatory. The Daily Caller decides to lie:

A video that has surfaced online shows Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaking candidly about the election and saying President Obama’s most diehard supporters are “dependent on government” and think they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”

47 percent of Americans are “Obama’s most diehard supporters”! I haven’t seen those polls myself. Drudge doubles down:

Screen shot 2012-09-17 at 10.04.43 PM

The propagandist in chief:

INDEED: Campaign that wrote off the white working class decries Romney’s concerns with the culture of dependency.

But again, Obama’s remarks were aimed at winning over the economically depressed white working class, not writing them off entirely, let alone expressing contempt for them. There’s a difference. Althouse:

I don’t see anything bad in there at all.

Another winger:

Mitt Romney told donors earlier this year that Obama supporters fail to take responsibility for their own lives. That sounds about right.

Massie gets it:

This is the thing: when you’re already the Man from Bain you don’t need more things cropping up reinforcing the most damaging stereotypes your opponents use against you. And you really don’t need to reinforce those stereotypes yourself. A simple rule of thumb: when people fear you’re a vampire squid don’t encourage them to believe you really are a vampire squid.

Another simple thing: even when the electorate merit your contempt it’s not a good idea to make your contempt quite so plain.

(Photo: Romney today by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Did Romney Just Lose The Election?

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Josh Barro puts his neck out:

You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney’s campaign for president.

On the tape, Romney explains that his electoral strategy involves writing off nearly half the country as unmoveable Obama voters. As Romney explains, 47 percent of Americans “believe that they are victims.” He laments: “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

So what’s the upshot? “My job is not to worry about those people,” he says. He also notes, describing President Obama’s base, “These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax.”

This is an utter disaster for Romney.

I agree with that. But the future is unpredictable. What we do know is that Mitt Romney has no intention of appealing to the 47 percent of Americans he regards as pathetic parasites. That’s a novel way of campaigning for president.

Romney Unplugged: Tweet Reax

Ad War Update: The Avalanche Was Just A Snowball

Over the weekend we featured two notable ads, one showcasing more sliminess from Rove's Super PAC, while the other, from the Obama campaign, issued a direct and powerful response to Romney's post-convention ad avalanche. Meanwhile, the Romney campaign is out with a flurry of new ads today, the most important of which is probably the following ad. It avoids mentioning Obama and instead lays out Mitt's five-point plan on the economy, which promises 12 million new jobs by the end of his first term (ad buy size/scope unknown):

And while last week Obama was "Failing American Workers", this week Romney alleges that the Obama administration's spending along with America's debt are "failing" families as well (ad buy size/scope unknown):

The campaign is after more support from women with this new debt and economy-centered ad – starring a baby (ad buy size/scope unknown):

Romney's people also put out a web video celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month by having Mitt recite Hispanic achievements. In ad analysis, McKay Coppins zooms in on the Romney campaign's newest strategy: to make the race a "base election" under the assumption that "it will not be decided by elusive, much-targeted undecided voters — but by the motivated partisans of the Republican base". Following that plan, Romney would use the campaign trail to focus on generating enthusiasm among the core conservative voters while campaign and allied advertising would serve a separate purpose:

Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and ad-man, said the case against Obama's record will be made on the airwaves by the campaign and outside Republican groups — and it no longer needs Romney as a daily spokesman. "On the outside, here's what going to happen: we're going to nuke Barack Obama into radioactive sludge in the swing states with 3000-4000 points of TV in September," Wilson said. "Crossroads and Restore [two Republican SuperPACs] will do the same. It's going to be hitting in concert with the terrible economic news, and it'll strike a chord."

But Scott Conroy looks into whether Team Romney's late push of ads might actually backfire:

[W]ith so much money targeting relatively few voters in key swing states, there is growing concern among Republicans that the advantage Romney is expected to have when those voters historically tune into the race may not be so significant after all. In other words, will the undecided simply tune out the increasingly inescapable noise from the late campaign ad barrage?

"We’re sort of in uncharted territory here," a senior Romney adviser said. "Regardless of a point of diminishing returns, we’re not going to be outspent by an incumbent president, and I think that’s important. At what point it becomes a tipping point, I don’t know, but we’re not going to be outspent like John McCain was, three to one, in 2008."

Speaking of the Democrats getting outspent, Joe Ricketts, the man accused of plotting [NYT] an anti-Obama ad starring Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is now the latest outside-spender to enter the race. Rickett's Super PAC, Ending Spending Action Fund, will sink $10 million in presidential ads and $2 million into down-ticket ads. Here is a overview of some of the disaffected, Obama-voter testimonials the group is using in their ads, which will being airing this week in at least four battleground states [WSJ]:

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is out with a few new web videos. Below is another testimonial from a Hispanic supporter, an immigrant who recently became a citizen (released in Spanish and English):

The campaign also put out a web video combating the charges by the GOP that Obama is fighting a war on religion, as well as one to challenge what they call Romney's "extreme makeover" with regards to Hispanic issues.

Ad War archive here.

Face Of The Day

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A protester looks out from a police van after being arrested during Occupy Wall Street protests on September 17, 2012 in New York City. The OWS movement, which sparked international protests and sympathy for its critique of the global financial crisis, is commemorating its first anniversary. The initial protest began in front of the New York Stock Exchange and was preceeded by a series of days where free courses were offered on such topics as Marxism, anarchism, education and finance. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

Half Of All Humans Throw Like Girls

Tamar Haspel investigated and found that the stereotype is largely based on science:

Around the world, at all ages, boys throw better — a lot better — than girls. Studies of overhand ball throwing across different cultures have found that pre-pubescent girls throw 51 to 69 percent of the distance that boys do, at 51 to 78 percent of the velocity. As they get older, the differences increase; one U.S. study found that girls age 14 to 18 threw only 39 percent as far as boys (an average of about 75 feet vs. about 192 feet).

Researcher Jerry Thomas strongly suspects that the core difference is "something neurological". Amanda Hess isn't too concerned, since "for most modern humans … it is very rarely necessary to throw anything, ever":

But throwing remains an area of male superiority, and so it has taken on an outsized social status, from the schoolyard to the cubicle trashcan. Most prominent professional sports and recess-period feats of strength were designed by and for men, and are predicated on the idea that throwing harder, farther, and faster is better. (Mercifully, this gender divide is reversed in college, where frat boys are forced to adopt that weak-forearm motion to lob ping pong balls into red Solo cups weighted with High Life.)

What Is A Black Hole Like?

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According to Tess Taylor's review of Caleb Scharf's book on black holes, a dam:

On earth, in a dam, there is pressure on one side and a lack of pressure on the other. Water forced through spillways, driven by gravity, generates enormous energy that we harvest as electricity. In a black hole, there is the universe on one side and a void on the other. And as stars and particles rush towards black holes, they pick up speed, sloshing in much the same way water does heading towards a dam or drain. Just as sloshing water represents lost energy we hear converted to gurgling sound waves, stars and gasses rushing towards the brink of a cosmic drain lose particles that can be "seen" translated into other forms of energy. The edges of black holes are thus always spewing matter, a kind of cosmic splatter paint. Although things pulled towards black holes are mostly swallowed, over time the sloshing of nearly swallowed stars spews the universe with a mess of Jackson Pollock-like cosmic goo. 

This dissolving star glop, Scharf wants to let us know, is actually the universe's generative mess. The things that splatter on the edges of black holes can themselves become new stars, or, can float as gasses that rearrange the galaxies they are in, or even the planets near them. The very fact of life on earth is certainly a gift of the random seepage of the right elements at the right time — a happy mix of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen, a little iron, a smidgen of gold. Our planet as we know it is the gift of imploded stars.

(Image: This computer-simulated image shows gas from a star that is ripped apart by tidal forces as it falls into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space. By NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz))

Romney Unplugged

Suddenly, his decision to pick a disciple of Ayn Rand for his veep makes more sense:

This is a major coup for Mother Jones and you should read the whole thing and watch the videos from a private fundraiser earlier this year. The contempt for 47 percent of Americans as parasites is really quite something. As is his total rejection of the preposterous idea that he was born into privilege:

Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.” Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, “I have inherited nothing.” He remarked, “There is a perception, ‘Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.’ Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.”

And here is his formula for economic growth: just electing him will be enough:

My own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.

My italics. Under Obama, the value of stocks in the Dow has doubled:

DJIA Over Ten Five Years

(Via Jim G.)

Did Obama Get An Ad Bump?

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Maybe, says Erika Franklin:

During both the Democratic and Republican conventions, ads favoring Obama dominated the airwaves in numerous markets, including key swing states such as Colorado, Ohio, Nevada, and Virginia. This advantage may help to explain why Obama’s ‘convention bounce’ was larger than Romney’s.

John Sides, who created the above chart, is intrigued:

What makes this hypothesis plausible is that imbalances in advertising spending are often necessary for advertising to influence the polls. If the candidates are at parity, then the two sides’ spending may simply cancel each other out. And, as some new research suggests, these imbalances may be more prevalent in presidential campaigns than previously thought. Certainly a lack of complete parity has been the norm in each of the past several months.

But Obama supporters should not get too excited. The effects of ads also decay quickly. Any advantage over these past several months, or even these past two weeks, should be less important than an advantage in late October.

Romney Pivots 360 Degrees

Alex Altman rounds up a flurry of conflicting Romney reboot stories:

The New York Times says Romney will sharpen his message. The Washington Post indicates he will redouble his emphasis on the economy, while Buzzfeed reports the campaign has decided the economy isn’t enough. Politico, whose dishy account of turbulence in Boston helped spur the switch, says the new strategy is to make the election "a referendum on ‘status quo versus change'" –which, by definition, seems more like a choice than a referendum. Got it?

The likeliest outcome of all these calls for change may be that little will change.