Month: November 2012

Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea, 5.02 pm. "Yes, that Gangnam"

Dashiell Bennett examines the GOP spin:

The early line coming from some Republicans is that Hurricane Sandy really put the brakes on Mitt Romney's campaign, just at the moment he was staging a powerful comeback. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour gave that idea its own forward push on the Sunday morning talk shows, explicitly saying that "The hurricane is what broke Romney's momentum."

John Cassidy weighs that reading:

If Obama does win tomorrow … it will be too much to say that Sandy was responsible. In all likelihood, he would have won anyway. Except for a few days after the Denver debate, his grip on the electoral college has never been seriously threatened.

Silver's related argument:

[W]hile the storm and the response to it may account for some of Mr. Obama’s gains, it assuredly does not reflect the whole of the story. Mr. Obama had already been rebounding in the polls, slowly but steadily, from his lows in early October — in contrast to a common narrative in the news media that contended, without much evidence, that Mr. Romney still had the momentum in the race.

Charles Kenny reviews the stats:

[A]round 90 percent of the 60,000 people who die in natural disasters each year die in the developing world.

That’s because surviving natural disasters is expensive. The best disaster resilience strategies involve paying for infrastructure—from sea walls to all-weather roads to irrigation systems—and solidly constructed buildings, alongside quality public services such as fire fighting, police, and ambulances. And withstanding a catastrophe requires being able to afford food and medicine even if prices for such goods rise in times of scarcity. Look at food scarcity from droughts: We’ve known since economist Amartya Sen’s Nobel prize-winning work that the best way to stop people dying in a famine is to make sure they have enough money to buy food.

Is there any demand Craigslist can't meet? Adam Martin surveys the black e-market:

There may be a shortage of fuel but there is no kind of shortage of people willing to sell it for $10 to $20 a gallon on Craigslist. In Flushing, Queens, somebody will let you drop by and fill up for $10 a gallon, but for $15 a gallon (at a ten-gallon minimum) you can get it delivered from someone out in Hewlett, Long Island, due east of JFK. Someone in Richmond Hill, Queens, is asking for offers from people who want to come by and fill up, with a listed price starting at $100 apparently for a five-gallon can. Someone else in Brooklyn also wants $100 for five gallons. Then there's the person offering five gallons for $70, in batches as big as 45 gallons: "Discounts for multiple purchase (call your friends!)." And that's just what was posted to Craigslist within the first two hours or so of Monday.

Previous coverage of the gas shortage and its economics here, here, here and here.

Romney goes positive in his one-minute closing message:

And faux-indignant on behalf of America in another (buy size/scope unknown):

The Romney campaign also came up with an odd assortment of reasons to vote for Mitt in a new web video. They also tried to paint Obama as anti-military in a second web video (yes, it includes the Navy claim). From the other side, the Obama camp goes back to basics with a repeat of their old outsourcing attack (buy size/scope unknown):

 

The Obama people also hit Romney in Nevada with a new gaffe-collecting radio spot, as well as a web video in which the president goes direct-to-camera to herald the end of the campaign. From elsewhere, in an ad that echoes the Romney vs Sandy spot we featured last week, the League Of Conservation Voters hits Romney hard on climate change (airing nationwide on cable, buy amount unknown):

In other outside spending news, GOP dark money group American Future Fund is out with a few new TV spots, another state-specific ad featuring press endorsements from that state (Wisconsin), and also this one-minute ad going glass-half-empty on Obama's auto-bailout ($1 million buy, target states unknown):

AFF also put out what seems to just be a web video illustrating their claim that the Obama campaign has been that of a shrinking president. Looking at the larger overall effect of outside spenders, Buzzfeed reports on how the GOP is apparently happy with Romney, his campaign, and the party's overall efforts – but the piece included this as well:

A conservative operative deeply involved with the web of outside groups spending heavily on Romney’s behalf expressed frustration recently at the failure of the flood of money being spent to move the dial. "You keep throwing money at the problem and it just doesn't resolve," he said a few weeks ago of the ongoing efforts to damage the president of the United States with expensive ad campaigns. After the storm, the same operative remarked, "Obama is just the luckiest man that ever lived."

Donovan Stack reminds us that the ad war has been an overwhelmingly negative one:

A full 86 percent of Obama’s television advertising and 79 percent of Romney’s has been negative, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising. By comparison, Obama and John McCain had spent an average of 69 percent of their TV budgets on negative ads by this point in 2008, and George W. Bush and John Kerry had spent 58 percent in 2004. … The president has spent more on attack ads — $236 million compared to Romney’s $110 million, according to The Washington Post money tracker. When outside groups are added in, though, the scales tip the other way. Obama and groups that support him have dropped $295 million on negative ads. On Romney’s side, that total is $351 million, the Post tracker shows.

And Peter Overby points out some alarming spending-ratios in the Virginia and Ohio Senate races:

[A]ccording to an NPR analysis of data from ad-tracking firm Kantar Media CMAG[,] pro-Republican [outside] groups in Virginia have run four times as many ads as their candidate, George Allen. In Ohio, they've spent twice as much on broadcast ads as candidate Josh Mandel and the state GOP. [Political scientist Tony] Corrado says the outside groups are pulling political power away from the traditional party organizations. "Many of the groups that were active in 2010 were even more active in 2012, and I expect we'll see them active in 2014 and 2016."

Also on the down-ticket, Obama cuts an ad for Congresswoman Mazie Hirono, who is running for the open Senate seat in Hawaii.  In Missouri, McCaskill continues to hammer Akin, this time letting her supporters do the dirty work:

Over in Connecticut, Evan McMorris-Santoro reports that GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon is suggesting a peculiar voting combo on Election Day:

Connecticut Republican Senate nominee Linda McMahon has been telling voters lately that it’s okay to vote for President Obama as well as her [like in this ad]. Now she’s taking it a step further — and getting about as far away from her own party’s nominee for president as she can — and actually urging voters to cast their ballots for Obama as well as in the final days of the campaign.

McMahon campaign door hangers [see it here] that Democrats say they’ve discovered in minority neighborhoods this weekend couldn’t make it more clear: "Vote Barack Obama For President and Vote Linda McMahon For U.S. Senate," they read. It’s a surprising suggestion from a Republican who, along with her husband, has given $150,000 to help make Romney the next president of the United States.

And by the way, McMahon has now spent a whopping $100 million over two campaigns [NYT] to try and become Connecticut's Senator – but she's currently still behind in the polls, again. In Montana, GOP Senate candidate Denny Rehberg is letting his daughter make a final pitch:

Finally, Will Ferrell adds his unique flare to GOTV:

Ad War archive here.

Should Romney lose tomorrow, Beinart bets that Republicans will fight over their party's immigration policies:

If Romney loses, it will also be hard for Republicans to escape the fact that their inability to win Hispanics represents a mortal threat to their political future. The GOP put virtually every major Republican Hispanic office-holder on stage at this year’s convention, but it didn’t matter. And even if they put Rubio on the ticket in 2016, it still won’t matter all that much, so long as Hispanics feel the GOP’s policies are anti–Hispanic immigrant.

If Romney loses, at least some prominent Republicans will recognize that he lost the Hispanic vote because he was pushed far to the right on immigration during the primaries. And they’ll demand that the next GOP nominee avoid that trap, which will put them in conflict with the party’s activist base. As one GOP strategist told the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein this August, referring to the Romney campaign’s bid to win the White House on the back of the white Anglo vote alone, “This is the last time anyone will try to do this.”

Shikha Dalmia also focuses on the GOP's loss of the Hispanic vote:

Hispanic support for Romney is about 15 percentage points lower than it was for George W. Bush’s 40 percent support in 2004. In Colorado, a Latino Decisions poll shows that 69 percent of Hispanic voters favor President Barack Obama, with only 17 percent for Romney. In Nevada, the edge is 69 percent to 15 percent. In Florida, there is a 29-point gap.

CK on SNL:

She has ideas for the whole family:

Even though my father died in childbirth and I never knew him, I still have some fun gift ideas for Dad. Venison always brings a grin to the lip – and really, how could it not? It's the gamey "Cadillac of meats". Another perineum favourite is magic tricks. What patriarch doesn't enjoy performing a nice sleight-of-hand-job for the family, après-dinner? For the divorced dad, mail order brides can be a fun gift. Sometimes.

(Hat tip: Kenneth DeGraff)