Month: November 2012

During his endorsement, Frum argued that Romney is unlikely to repeal Obamacare. I replied:

Romney has said it will be his first priority on Day One to end the program despised by every element of his far right party. He says this almost every day. David thinks Romney is cynical enough to make that clear, binding pledge day after day, ad after ad, and then instantly renege on it, even with a Republican majority in both Houses.

Frum clarifies:

1) If Democrats hold the Senate, as they likely will, possibly with an increased majority, how does repeal become law? 2) Even if Democrats lose the Senate, what exactly does the repeal statute look like? Is it the 1-sentence law simply voiding the law? But such a law would have immediate impact on a lot of Republican constituencies. It would, for example, immediately raise prescription drug costs for many Medicare recipients. Don’t the phones start ringing in congressional offices as seniors discover that fact? What about the 20-somethings on their parents’ health insurance. How do they (and their parents) react when they learn they will lose their coverage? Angry, right?

Can and will congressional Republicans really muscle through that anger? Especially if they have dropped a half dozen or so House seats? Or will they begin to expand their 1-sentence law to start addressing voter concerns? As the law grows, it will rapidly bulk into a substantial health reform on its own. As it bulks, it will accumulate more and more opposition, not only among Democrats, but among Republicans too. The Republican party that failed to pass a healthcare reform in the eight years 2001-2009 is not ready to pass a healthcare reform in the first nine months of the next Congress. Yet that’s what it must do if it is to repeal Obamacare while preserving Obamacare’s most popular features. And that’s what I doubt it will be able to do. The claim is not that Romney is lying to his supporters. The claim is that healthcare change is hard, and the repeal of Obamacare will be an especially complicated and dangerous change.

But if the latter is true (which it is), so is the former. Romney isn’t dumb. He knows how complicated it would be. And yet he insists it can be done on Day One. So he’s a liar – which is why we shouldn’t worry about voting for him.

Among America’s closest allies, it’s a landslide for Obama. The president gets 62-65 percent support in Britain; 64 percent in Germany; 65 percent in Brazil; over 70 percent in Canada; 67 percent in Australia; and 72 percent in France. Only two “allied” countries back Rommey: Pakistan and Israel, both increasingly fundamentalist religious states with nuclear weapons. One is clearly still irked by the Osama bin Laden raid; the other calculating that the Republican nominee will more likely back permanent control of the West Bank and a war against Iran.

Reflecting on the early-voting debacles in Florida, as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania, Andrew Cohen marvels at how openly GOP leaders have discussed their motivations:

In Pennsylvania, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai was caught on tape this summer boasting about his colleagues’ success: “… First pro-life legislation — abortion facility regulations — in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” In Ohio, the Republican Party chairman of Franklin County, which includes Columbus, was even more blunt. Doug Preisse said, “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter turnout machine.”

There is no hidden agenda here. The strategy and tactics are as far out in the open as those voters standing in line for hours waiting for their turn to vote. 

Cohen sees this as “conclusive proof that America failed to solve the fundamental problems” of the 2000 recount in Florida. But backlash against the brazen attempts at voter suppression may also now be a factor in ramping up the black and Latino vote:

Democrats extend Florida early voting lead wapo.st/YL0VCQ

— PostPolitics (@postpolitics) November 5, 2012

(Photo: People wait in line to vote at the North Miami Public Library on November 1, 2012 in North Miami, Florida. Voters are complaining about hours long waits in line to cast their ballots and former Florida governor, Charlie Crist, as well as state Democrats, have asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to extend early voting hours for all the state’s counties. Rick Scott authorized a law limiting voting days to 8 from 14. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

It's the only consistent thing in his entire life, apart from his hair. But he won't talk about it and gets angry when pushed to explain what he believes, what secret rites he has performed in, what he believes about the Second Coming in Missouri, etc, etc. When your running mate is touting his pocket rosary, and when your party believes there is no distinction between religion and politics, then why is Romney so livid and touchy? Watch what everyone else is watching:

For further information about Romney's faith and another video that shows an actual Mormon Temple ceremony he would have participated in, check this out. On Mormonism's long history of white supremacy, check out our thread page here.

Simone Foxman wonders why "the government won’t pay for flood prevention, but it will pay for flood damage that the prevention might have prevented":

The US … is fixated on rebuilding flood-damaged homes rather than preventing future damage. As it stands, “repetitive-loss properties,” defined as those that have suffered damage up to 25% of their total value twice in 10 years, “account for just 1 percent of [National Flood Insurance Program's] insured properties but are responsible for 25 percent to 30 percent of claims,” according to a report published (pdf) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2011. The bulk of those properties are located along the Gulf Coast (which has the highest number of claims), and subsidized by properties up north (where there is high coverage but a low volume of claims).

In response to a report detailing which artifacts in the still-unfinished 9/11 museum are likely damaged, Taylor Berman asks:

It seems worth noting here that the memorial cost at least $700 million to build; perhaps some of that could have gone to more comprehensive flood prevention?

From the report:

It was understood that a portion of the memorial was to be constructed in a 100-year flood plain — that is, an area of dry land with a 1 percent chance of flooding each year due to storms (and, therefore, a 100 percent chance of being flooded once a century). … It did not seem conceivable then that a 100-year flood would occur during Hurricane Irene last year — before the museum’s opening day — and that a second disruptive storm would pass through 14 months later.

Update from a reader:

Not true. Something with a 1% chance per year for 100 years will happen with a probability of 63.4%. (The equation is 1.0 – 0.99 ^ 100)

Blumenthal watches the national polls (above is the current poll of polls, sans Rasmussen, since September 1, with maximal sensitivity to find any sudden trends):

[C]onsider the dozen or so new national polls released on Sunday. The results appear to be converging, as they often do in the final days of the campaign. A week ago, the margins separating the candidates varied between a 4-point Romney advantage and a 3-point Obama edge. Now the spread in the margins is narrower. Five of the polls show an exact tie, and seven give nominal advantages to Obama that are between 1 and 3 percentage points. The new surveys include the final national samples from the Pew Research Center, NBC/Wall Street Journal, CNN/ORC International and YouGov.

On the above graph, the president is now only 0.4 percentage points down from his implosion on October 3. Nate Cohn believes Obama's odds are good:

The polls are quite consistent and clear in the battleground states worth 270 electoral votes. With Obama above 49 percent in Nevada, Wisconsin, and Ohio, a wave of undecided voters can't flip the outcome. At this point, the polls must be wrong for Romney to prevail. The polls have been wrong before and they will be wrong again. The race is close enough for the polls to conceivably get one of those states wrong, but the odds are against it.

Kevin Drum accounts for polling error:

[S]uppose there is a systematic bias in the polls. How big would it have to be in order for Romney to win? This is what Sam Wang's "meta-margin" tells us, and it currently stands at 2.72%. That's how far off the polls would have to be—either because undecideds break heavily for Romney or because the pollsters' likely voter screens are wrong—in order for Romney to win, and it's a pretty big number. It's unlikely that either of these effects is anywhere near that large.

I've taught myself not to predict these things. But the data we have in front of us suggests a small late surge for Obama. But what I love about elections is the snap-moment of reality they reveal. That will always be a mystery to some extent. And that's something at this point – as we have only hours to the final stretch – worth treasuring a little.

We don't know.

A reader quotes me:

"Probably a Sandy-effect, but there are some straws in the psephological wind to back it up."  Thank you for "psephological," Andrew.  You sent me to the dictionary with that one.  I love discovering new words and that was one that had escaped me until now.

Another:

What the fuck?!  Who the Hell will ever need to use this asshole word?  It made me angry to learn the definition when I googled it.  I repeat, who the Hell would ever find this asshole word useful?  Shame on you.  I'm angry at you for inflicting this word on me.

Buckley, Safire and Hitchens are dead. What are you gonna do? Give up?  Update from a reader:

At least in one country, every English-speaking news junkie above a certain age knows the word "psephology".  That's because one of the earliest private news channels in India was started by Prannoy Roy, who describes himself as a psephologist and was already a celebrity in the days of state-run TV (i.e. the 1980s) via his weekly programme "The World This Week".

We have been unable to process new videos since the hurricane hit, so we dug into the “Ask Anything” archive to find this one from August 6:

Many more videos of Barney Frank here.

What Paul Ryan says to evangelicals when he thinks no one else is listening.

Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei actually wrote these sentences:

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000. A broad mandate this is not.