Governing through Reason
Open Mic August 31
The news cycle was dominated by Hurricane Isaac and the Republican National Convention. Writers and reporters put away the word “presumptive” for another four years; Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are now officially nominees. Next week, the Democrats get their turn, but it probably won’t involve Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair, a performance that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer thought was “absolutely terrific”.
Politico asks six questions about the Romney acceptance speech:
- Does he pass the get-it test?
- Does he make a coherent case for his candidacy?
- Would you want to share a caffeine-free Diet Coke with that guy?
- Can he make his résumé relevant?
- Does he get the details right?
- Do listeners cringe?
- Does he surprise us?
The Labor Day weekend is upon us. Answer these questions, or any others that suit your fancy, or pose questions of your own. Or even — gasp — something not about the upcoming elections!What’s on your mind?
Don’t see an article on a particular topic, but want to talk about it somewhere? This is Open Mic. Talk about whatever you want, but stay respectful.
We create a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.
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#102 written by shortchain 8 months ago
What’s overlooked in this lack of a “bench” for the Democrats is that Democrats aren’t a party where candidates take their turn at running for office as is the Republican party.
The Democrats put up a field of candidates, some of them old, some of them new, but all of them blue, and then choose among them — and the choice isn’t all that often foreseeable even a few years ahead.
Republicans, of course, do not, and never will, understand this, as it just seems so foreign to the daddy party folks.
If I were interested in such a thankless exercise as trying to forecast who might be in the mix four years from now, I would look for a governor or a member of Congress known for giving good stump speeches.
I think Biden will explore the option — why not, if he can? I think there will be couple of governors — probably from states like Missouri who, over the next few years, will start showing up in other states and other venues. And there will undoubtedly be some quixotic runs for the purposes of getting some exposure for causes. Maybe Keith Ellison will give it a go. He gives a barn-burner of a speech when he wants to.
Expect the field to start moving as soon as this election is over — but not before, other than some maneuvering behind the scenes.
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#103 written by rgbact 8 months ago
“Looking at the roster of convention speakers, I see no one in the
same league as Christie, Rubio, Ryan, Walker, Haley, or Scott Brown.”Sucks when your previous potentials are now either in federal prison, involved with potential investor fraud, were found with prostitutes, or were caught with mistresses while their wives were dying of cancer. I’m frankly surprised Deval Patrick doesn’t get alot more hype. He’s like Obama with an actual job. A semi-credible minority is a cinch to win the primary.
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#104 written by Max 8 months ago
First> rgbact, I am very surprised that YOU, of all people, would jump all over the GOP as you just did!
Second> In 1996, we pretty much knew Gore was the 2000 nominee. In 2000, we had a field that already included Kerry. In 2004, we watched the Obama speech and strongly felt he was going to be a presence very shortly, but Clinton was the “inevitable” 08 candidate (and, but for the idiocy of . None of those thing apply today. From a strategic standpoint, replacing Biden this year would have been a much wiser move for the Democrats.
Expecting nothing to change per finance laws, any 2012 Democrat candidates will need extremely high name recognition and will, VERY EARLY on, have to define themselves well BEFORE the GOP has the opportunity. I wouldn’t even begin to make a short list as of right now. -
#105 written by shortchain 8 months ago
Max,
Au contraire, the way the GOP plays the game today means that a candidate who starts late in the Democratic party has the advantage. The GOP today is all into the politics of personal destruction. They are pro-actively destroying anyone they think would be a danger to their electoral chances. They learned, to their cost with Clinton and Obama, that you can’t leave these things until late anymore.For example, remember the popular Democratic governor from Alabama?
Since the GOP controls many of the states, they have the ability to destroy Democrats before they become known well enough to be a danger.
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I’m fascinated by this “who has the deepest bench” discussion. When you think about it, this concept really encapsulates the major difference between the two political parties. The Republicans are rigid and hierarchical, requiring politicians to log specific milestones, jump through hoops and earn their stripes, whereupon party seniority will be conferred upon them as a privilege from “the establishment.”
The Democrats are practical and pragmatic, and look around for the person they judge best suited at the time to carry their banner and promote their political ideals regardless of personal connections or curriculum vitae.
It is much easier to “come from nowhere” and rise quickly within the Democratic party, because all you need is ability. This seems to me quintessentially American, while (somewhat paradoxically) the Republican view of upward party mobility is much more like a European model in its focus on rigid hierarchy. Their “bench” is already clearly defined, because if you aren’t already on an inside track you have no cahnce in four years.
Republicans look for people with the right pedigree, background and connections. Democrats are just looking for somebody with the Right Stuff.
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#107 written by rgbact 8 months ago
“It is much easier to “come from nowhere” and rise quickly within the Democratic party, because all you need is ability.”
And yet the Democrat party is so aligned with unions.….which are about the most hierarchical, “next in line” institutions in America today. In reality,America is doing badly right now.….which favors newbies and those “up and comers” with slim resumes and potentially fresh ideas. I think both parties have figured that much out.
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#108 written by dawolf 8 months ago
@filistro
“Republicans look for people with the right pedigree, background and connections. Democrats are just looking for somebody with the Right Stuff.”
from the outside, both parties in America care way more about this than europeans. George W Bush, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton. Talk of Chelsea Clinton going for a seat — wtf, just because of her surname? Beau Biden, similarly. The Kennedy clan. Rand Paul. The list is much longer, I am sure, and it is the most bipartisan thing about American politics.
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@wolf… . Talk of Chelsea Clinton going for a seat — wtf, just because of her
surname? Beau Biden, similarly. The Kennedy clan. Rand Paul.That’s not hierarchy, it’s mostly just nepotism, which exists everywhere in the world. Though like you, I have somewhat of an outsider view and agree that Americans, especially Republicans, are much more preoccupied with class and pedigree than many Europeans. I think deep in their hearts they still yearn for their own Royal Family, and keep looking for substitutes. (I’d wager that most of the people wangling for an intro to the various Royals who visit America would be Republicans.)
I do think a talented individual with strong abilities could really come from nowhere and rise very quickly to prominence within the Democratic party, but this woudl be much less likely for the Republicans, who are elitists at heart and value power and pedigree over personal ability.
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#110 written by shortchain 8 months ago
@filistro,
It’s an irony of the politics in the USA that the Republican party is most closely aligned with the individualistic, libertarian, segment — and yet the party almost invariably runs someone “whose turn it is”.Perhaps the alignments of politically-active organizations, such as unions, the Chamber of Commerce, the Catholic Church, and so on, do not necessarily reflect the politics of their members. Which individual members, under our imperfect political system, decide who wins the primaries.
It used to be much simpler, about 80 years ago, when the organizations told their members who to vote for, and when the nominees were chosen by a few king-makers in smoke-filled back rooms. That all ended, for the Democratic party, finally and irrevocably, in 1968. For better or for worse.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have not made the transition completely yet. The rank-and-file of the party would have desperately liked to have other choices than the ones they got — but without the backing of Adelson, Gingrich would have been a footnote in the history of this election. Without his billions, Romney would be nowhere. Santorum had his sugar-daddy, too. Poor Tiny Tim Pawlenty had nobody with huge wealth who could be cozened into believing he had a chance, and so had to sit out the dance.
We could go on, but you get the idea. Extremely wealthy individuals, sitting in rooms far removed from the public, made the decisions as to who would be the Republican nominee.
One of my favorite authors is a guy named “Tim Powers”, who writes these wild modern fantasies in which strings of bizarre events take you on a ride. Think of what Thomas Pynchon might produce if he went on a diet of mescaline and coffee for the duration of his effort.
Yet I doubt even Powers could have imagined the political events of this last year.
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OBTW, did any of you catch him blowing one of the last lines of the speech? The transcript says he said:
We chose more freedom instead of more government.
But he actually said
We chose more government instead of more freedom.
It was jarring enough that I had to go back and listen again.
I heard it, and wrote it off to an unintentional verbal flub by an inexperienced and nervous speaker. Everyone engages in some verbal fumbling.
Of course, had Obama mis-spoke like this, the media and the right-wing carnivores would have been all over it, and offering it as proof of the President’s hatred of freedom.
But then, the President would never say such a line in the first place, because Democrats aren’t mentally crippled enough to imagine that having health care somehow makes you less “free.” Nor are they low-brow enough to cast every mere policy and partisan difference as an assault on “freedom.”
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I can’t recall any political event in recent history that has caused such wildly mixed reactions as Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” speech.
Reactions on the left range from those like Jon Stewart who found it a source of totally hilarious comedy (“I haven;t been so gratfeul to an old man since Dick Cheney shot one in the face”) to others who found it baffling, tasteless, vulgar, offensive, ineffective, crude, ill-timed and politically suicidal… but the opinions are uniformly negative.
Reactions on the right, by contrast, are ecstatic. The feedback is now coming in from everywhere, and the wingers LOVED it. Even normally smart people like Jennifer Rubin think Eastwood was “crazy like a fox.” And the Freepers are already making it a national movement… putting empty chairs in their front yards, hanging dollhouse size empty chairs in their car windows. Apparently this bit of performance art carried some sort of subliminal message that you can only grasp if you are of a right-leaning mindset.
We are still waiting to hear what indies and moderates thought of it. I guess the polls will tell us in few more days.
Meanwhile, channeling Jeff Foxworthy… if you thought Clint Eastwood gave a great performance, you just might be a Republican.
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#113 written by WA7th 8 months ago
I wish I was wrong, so please convince me.
Y’all are thinking in the old box, but the old box has yet to figure out how to succeed an ordinary lame duck, let alone an extraordinary lame duck. Be creative with your inner cynic. If the dems go with their old strategies in ’16, then I think they will be out-hustled like they were in ’00 and ’04. In my view, 2016 is all about slowly declining Republican demographics vs. steeply declining Democratic enthusiasm following an overperformance.
@mac — People did 2nd-guess Gore’s loss, but Gore didn’t lose because he ran away from Clinton (and how could he credibly anyway, as Clinton’s VP?), Gore lost because he lacked charisma and couldn’t generate enough enthusiasm. Ditto Kerry. Sad thing is, they both have about as much personality as anyone can survive with after having made it to nearly the top of the party heirarchy. Obama didn’t come from the establishment, he took it over during the primaries, and that’s a rarity. An establishment Dem has not taken the White House in many of our lifetimes, and most of the many reasons for that are not about to change. This party hasn’t learned how to duplicate Clintons or Obamas, but it still breeds the Harry Reids it doesn’t needs. 2016 is most aptly comparable to 2000 by the boring flabby white men who make people want to stay home.
Unless something big changes between now and four years from now, turnout in the general election will be low, and Republicans already have their built-in advantage there as usual, but also they’ve sharpened it in 2012 by having their players already exposed and vetted four years early.
@mac — It’s too soon to say what Obama’s popularity will be like in another 3 or 4 years.
I don’t remember any lame duck who was more popular on his last day than he was on the day of his 2nd inaugural address. Do you?@dc — …particularly not one who is going to win re-election with well over 300 electoral votes.
He won’t be getting 300 electoral votes because people are enthusiastic about Dems overall. He’ll get them because the Republicans are just well-enough fractured this time around and because Romney is a pinnochio in so many ways. He won’t win because you and I like him, he’ll win because enough people held their noses and voted for him anyway, and because enough other people decided not to stay home after all because that Romney guy is a little frightening come to think of it.
@MW, et al. - Having the most honestly credible opposition for the 2012 primary season wouldn’t have harmed Obama in any way he’s not already damaged, and actually would have helped overall enthusiasm for the general, and we all know he would have survived any challenge. Not having any opposition at all in the primaries has not helped Dem enthusaism any for the general, and I believe it’s a contributing factor to the genuine turnout problem Obama might be currently underestimating. His base will never be satisfied, but he hasn’t done enough to baby-talk them into feeling a little better about what has been accomplished on their side, and he should have been doing just that in the primaries which weren’t opposed. That laundry could have been aired dry by now. It isn’t.
Yes, in most other election years, trying to primary a popular incumbent wouldn’t be a good career move toward the oval office, but Obama bashing is the national pastime, and will be for awhile yet. It’s safe and fun for the whole family. Even dirty hippies do it! An opposition candidate could have said everything that Obama’s base has been whining about for the past four years without doing themself
any lasting damage, and could have done it in way that both gets the nobody’s name out there and helps Obama emerge stronger in the general.2008 was the toughest primary fight the Dems have seen in a long time. Did it harm the party? If HRC had won the nomination, would Obama’s opposition in the primary have hurt her in the general? I think not. Now is different from then, but in any year an honest clean primary needn’t necessarily harm the primary loser for future elections nor the primary winner for the immediate general election. It sometimes does happen because good earth sometimes gets scorched in the political primaries, but it needn’t be that way, especially when the primary outcome is a foregone conclusion and it’s mainly for show (but don’t tell anyone).
As far as dogging Obama the entire time he’s a lame duck in office. Why not? Everyone else is, and the obstructionism already has everything at a standstill. Might as well start someone else campaigning four years early. How would it necessarily harm an already lame duck? Politics is cynical, so get your name out there, pin your little note of complaints onto the Great American Scapegoat alongside everyone else’s and prepare to be the best looking one around at the chase-off celebration.
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@shortchain… Extremely wealthy individuals, sitting in rooms far removed from the
public, made the decisions as to who would be the Republican
nominee.
Isn’t it odd? Republicans somehow manage the tricky feat of worshiping both God and Mammon.To rise in the party you must either have enormous personal wealth or be able to attract huge amounts of money to yourself from others. But then in addition to the smell of money, you must add the scent of piety, spraying on the religiosity like cheap cologne so you leave the smell of it everywhere you go. And you have to keep doing this for years while you wait for it to be “your turn.”
No wonder the only people willing to endure this unpleasant process generally turn out to be such unlikeable individuals that the public has a hard time warming to them.
My question… and I challenge one of our righties to give me an honest answer… If the GOP has a such an impressively deep bench, why did this election cycle, with a 40% incumbent and a terrible economy, produce such a miserable clown car of primary candidates?
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filistro,
The empty chair is a gimmick. Republicans love gimmicks. McCain’s campaign was full of them. Remember the tire pressure gauges? Remember how we was going to suspend his campaign to solve the economic crisis? Remember Sarah Palin? There were dozens more of these gimmicks I can’t recall now, but it was one such bit of fluff after another. And this is yet another way the Romney campaign echos 2008.
Republicans think it’s really clever to compare the President to an empty chair, playing on the ludicrously false “incompetence” mean. Also, sittin’ that boy down and givin’ him a good talkin’ to.
But notice what we’re not talking about — Romney. The snide and condescending dogwhistle gimmickry of the right doesn’t give moderates a reason to vote for the purveyors of cheap shots. It does, however, display the gradeschool-level humor that represents the intellectual heights of the Republican Party.
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I don’t remember any lame duck who was more popular on his last day than he was on the day of his 2nd inaugural address. Do you?
Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Approval-Center.aspx -
WA7… I think you are asking for an impossibility. You demand to be given the name of a rising star for the Dems, but you want him to be a charismatic insurgent who will come from nowhere and turn the political machine on its head.
The two concepts are mutually exclusive, just like those women (and sadly, there are many
) who are looking for a strong-minded independent man they can marry and push around for the rest of their lives.If this new Democratic star is really going to be an insurgent, we probably don’t yet know much about him. But four years is a long time, not just in politcs but in life.
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I’ve said it before. In 2004, there were a few people who were excited about Obama — but not really before the 2004 convention. And Democrats were dispirited about having a shallow bench. In 1988, almost no one had heard of Bill Clinton. In 1972, no one knew Jimmy Carter (say what you want about his presidency, he actually won in ’76). In 1956, John Kennedy was still pretty obscure.
I have no worries at all about 2016. No matter what Republicans do, there’s a really good chance the economy will be soaring by then. No matter what foreign crises come up, we have an incredibly competent and capable commander-in-chief at the helm in the form of President Obama. His stance (and the Democrats’) on civil rights issues,and the Republican opposition both to that and to allowing people to keep their health care, will be significant issues.
After Obama is reëlected in November, I’m really excited about 2016.
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#119 written by WA7th 8 months ago
Curse you, Red Baron, as usual, but I would rather not recommend impeachment hearings nor arms-for-hostages hearings as a path to increasing one’s duckly popularity, at least not over the internet or via cellphone. Gallup be damned, if someone did go broke underestimating the taste of the American public, Gallup’d profit from the story.
And fili’s not making me feel any better.
I want my mommy.
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#120 written by WA7th 8 months ago
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WA7… I’m worried about you. I count on you for laughs and levity, not doom and gloom.
Don’t worry, be happy. DC is right. Obama is going to be re-elected, the economy is going to stage an abrupt V-shaped recovery (starting with a Santa Claus rally on the Dow this December that will make history) the Republicans are going to continue to fracture embarrassingly and publicly, the Dems are going to win big in 2014 and field four very strong candidates in 2016 (I know who they are but I don’t want to jinx them), we will see the repeal of DOMA, Obamacare will kick in and people will love it, wind and solar energy will become really big items in the economy, Roe v. Wade will remain the law of the land, Barack Obama will be widely recognized even before he leaves office as one of the best presidents in history, Joel Osteen will be revealed as a serial adulterer who runs a dog-fighting ring out of the church basement, and All Will Be Well.
(Okay, the Joel Osteen one is mostly wishful thinking, but all the rest are absolute truth.)
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#122 written by mostlyilurk 8 months ago
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Chris Rock just tweeted this lol:
The Dems should have an empty chair on stage for the entire DNC, & when anyone asks who it belongs to, they can say Osama bin Laden.That’s absolutely wonderful. President Obama should bring the chair to any presidential debate in which the topic of military or foreign policy is discussed.
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fili –
Is Julian Castro on your list for 2016? I haven’t heard or seen him yet, but I’ve been hearing Good Things. May be a flash in the pan — far too early to tell — but I’m looking forward to his speech at the convention.
Then there’s Andrew Cuomo, and maybe about a hundred ad fifty people that none of us have heard of.
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Andy Borowitz just put up this article
Fresh from the 2012 Republican National Convention, Rep. Paul Ryan
(R-Wisc.) today called being nominated for Vice President his greatest
personal triumph “since I won the Tour de France, in 2006.” -
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rgbact,
Sucks when your previous potentials are now either in federal prison, involved with potential investor fraud, were found with prostitutes, or were caught with mistresses while their wives were dying of cancer.
And yet the Republicans have managed to find replacements for all of them, or simply continue to support them anyway.
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#130 written by rgbact 8 months ago
And yet the Republicans have managed to find replacements for all of them, or simply continue to support them anyway.
Sorry.…I was referring to Blago, Corzine, Spitzer, and Edwards. All budding Dem superstars not long ago. But thats the thing with budding superstars…they can end up being a huge mistake too–so pushing them too soon can really backfire.
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shortchain,
It’s an irony of the politics in the USA that the Republican party is most closely aligned with the individualistic, libertarian, segment — and yet the party almost invariably runs someone “whose turn it is”.
True, but this time looked for a while like it might be an exception. Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, and Hermann Cain were not anywhere near the head of the line, but all three had moments where it appeared they might be able to cut ahead of the rest.
If the “next in line” rule holds true, and Romney loses in November, the next nominee will be Rick Santorum. In terms of his stage presence, he has a lot less to offer than Christie or Rice, or even Rubio.
In terms of other possibilities, Walker isn’t BSC like Bachmann, but he is still more VP material than the sort that appears at the top of a winning ticket. TPaw isn’t the sort to typically make it past the first round of weed-outs. JEB might have a shot at it, but his path is a pretty complicated one; a flawless campaign can overcome it, but that’s really, really hard to pull off.
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DC,
I heard it, and wrote it off to an unintentional verbal flub by an inexperienced and nervous speaker. Everyone engages in some verbal fumbling.
Of course. It just happened to be a rather critical part of a rather critical speech at a rather critical event for his career. I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of “well, this proves he’s incompetent” so much as “wow, what an unfortunate time for that sort of thing to hit”.
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WA7th,
2008 was the toughest primary fight the Dems have seen in a long time. Did it harm the party? If HRC had won the nomination, would Obama’s opposition in the primary have hurt her in the general? I think not.
This topic comes up in these parts with a degree of regularity. Each time, I observe that 2008 was a rare instance of two really solid candidates, either of which were more than acceptable to proponents of the other. There were some PUMAs out there who supported Hillary and wouldn’t support Obama, but that was a pretty small faction. Someone opposing Obama in 2012 would have been more akin to Jerry Brown’s opposition to Jimmy Carter in 1980. Lots of downside, and little upside potential.
Interesting factoid of note regarding Carter. If each racial demographic voted in the same ratios as they did in 1980, but the demographic makeup of the country matched the 2012 makeup, Carter would have (barely) won reëlection.
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filistro,
If the GOP has a such an impressively deep bench, why did this election cycle, with a 40% incumbent and a terrible economy, produce such a miserable clown car of primary candidates?
I know I’m not a conservative, but I have a theory about this.
Nobody wants to get onto the general election ballot and lose. For decades, that has spelled the end of advancement in your political career. In many cases, it has spelled the end of your political career altogether. For this reason, you don’t want to end up on that ballot unless you are confident that you will win.
If candidates could wait until the summer of the election year to choose, we would have had a pretty big field of challengers. The economy has rebounded some since the dark days of 2009, but not to the point where people feel good about it. But the candidates really had to choose to enter a year ago. It’s hard to tell what the economy will look like a year hence, and that’s particularly true in this case because the leading indicators of a year ago were pointing in all sorts of directions. This meant that the only candidates who were entering the race were candidates who either believed that the economy was really going to worsen (either organically or by…intelligent design), or candidates whose prospects of making it past the primaries were sufficiently long against the more solid choices that they figured they had a better shot against the weaker field that was manifesting itself in 2012.
If the economy were in a serious depression, with the stock market staying down, unemployment on the rise, and soup-kitchen lines, there wouldn’t have been that degree of uncertainty. Strong Republican candidates would have entered the race. But that’s not what we had, so they’re keeping their powder dry…particularly since most of them are young enough that even an eight-year wait isn’t painful.
This is a long way of saying “it’s game theory, ma’am”.
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#135 written by rgbact 8 months ago
“If each racial demographic voted in the same ratios as they did in 1980, but the demographic makeup of the country matched the 2012 makeup, Carter would have (barely) won reëlection.”
Thats why thats a huge “if“and why I made that a major point in my immigration piece a few months back. Now flip it and see how much Obama would lose by if we had the same racial makeup as 1980. Now thats scary.
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filistro,
the economy is going to stage an abrupt V-shaped recovery
Not if we go over the cliff. Seriously. The economic actions that come from “do nothing before January 1″ are the full laundry list of exactly the opposite of what Keynesian economists prescribe for a bad economy. And doing it suddenly and all together like that…it’s a perfect storm that couldn’t do more harm to the economy if someone intentionally designed something to cause a recession.
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#139 written by mostlyilurk 8 months ago
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Not if we go over the cliff.
A lot depends on how you define the cliff.
There are several matters that come up at the end of the year, but few of them are urgent.
The sequester, for example, is scheduled for then theoretically. But Congress already approved a temporary budget extension until (I think it’s) March of 2013, so no actual spending levels change until then. For the Bush tax cuts, a bill can be written by someone in the lame duck session that can be brought to the floor on Jan 1, which reinstates the tax cuts for all income under $250,000. Fewer that 2% of Americans would see any change in any 2013 paycheck.
There are other matters, of course. I simply use these as a couple of easy examples.
Which of the other upcoming matters concerns you?
I know there’s another debt limit argument coming up (which won’t even be an issue if Romney gets elected of course — Congress would then pass a debt limit increase without hesitation). There is the 2013 budget, but as I said, they’ve got until March to enact another extension, or whatever they are going to do. There are possible extensions of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday, but I’d expect them to get settled, probably not even contentiously, either in the lame duck session or in the bill that reinstates the tax cuts for income under $250,000.
What else is there? I’m sure I’m missing a few things.
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@Not if we go over the cliff. Seriously. The economic actions that come
from “do nothing before January 1″ are the full laundry list of
exactly the opposite of what Keynesian economists prescribe for a
bad economy.You’re certainly right about that. But think for a minute… what is the political advantage to anybody of letting us go over a cliff? The Republicans have nothing to gain if/when Obama already has won a second term, since the whole purpose of all these 4 years of obstructionism was a costly and futile attempt to prevent that from happening. And Republicans are people who have personal careers, investments and families just like everybody else and stand to lose just as much in an economic disaster.
I’m sure they are already huddling on this, considering their strategy. They know that Obama is going to win and they have to find a way forward that saves the country from disaster and looks like they should get the credit for the rescue… or at least like they didn’t totally knuckle under in the process.
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Poor Paul Ryan is about to learn the consequences of his fact-free speech at the convention. From now on, everything he says (or has ever said in the past) will be coming under much closer scrutiny.
For instance, his recent claim to have run a sub-3 marathon.
“Runner’s World” did some fact-checking.
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Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog brings us the ten weirdest planks in the Republican platform.
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#147 written by WA7th 8 months ago
Are we going to see the rockstar Obama doing a large stadium tour of swing states where normal little peasants can get in to hear or see him?
We need a bunch of sherlocks on the ground in swing states betraying the plans of both sides’ GOTV efforts. Dems know it’s important this time to minimize the drop-off after ’08’s impressive turnout, so what are they doing about it?
We know a court ruled last week that Florida can’t outlaw 3rd party registration drives? Anything else look promising on that front?
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So which did you get, the strong-minded independent or the pushover?
Agree w/ WA7 about shallowness of Dem bench. Looking at the roster of convention speakers, I see no one in the same league as Christie, Rubio, Ryan, Walker, Haley, or Scott Brown.
So who is the Dem nominee in 2016?
Scary thought is that Biden is allegedly making plans for a 2016 bid…