Showing posts with label armchair quarterback. Show all posts
Showing posts with label armchair quarterback. Show all posts

Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Nonsensical Election of 2014

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Many people in the U.S. and around the world are still struggling to understand why a Midterm Election in which only 36% of voters bothered to show up at the polls is being taken as a "Mandate" by the nutty Republicans. If this is just a typical midterm election, then why does it feel as if we've really gone down the rabbit hole this time?

Maybe it's the obvious gloating of the Tea Partiers, who should realize how marginalized they are according to every demographic number, but who thought President Obama should just surrender and impeach himself the day after the election. I guess the fact that Cuckoo-For-Cocoa-Puffs candidates will soon pour into both houses of Congress is giving them the "audacity of hope" that their draconian views are the norm. Why shouldn't they gloat? They turned out the vote, and the Democrats failed miserably.



Maybe we are just outnumbered by the stupids in this country, and we need to accept that.

While cool heads are saying this election was a quirk of red-state geography, gerrymandering, and local elections that pushed hot-button issues, that's no solace to those who voted Blue in a Red State. For instance, in Tennessee it is a fact that a new constitutional amendment to make abortions harder to get failed in the four major cities, thanks to Blue voters. However, it was passed almost as a landslide statewide as if those cities and their Democratic voters didn't even exist. And therein lies a sad truth about why turn-out is so low among Dems in red states - our votes get canceled out, and that leads to voter malaise and low turnout.



We also suffered in Tennessee from a wealthy scandal-proof fence-rider of a Republican governor whose only Democratic opposition was some unknown doofus named, I kid you not, "Charlie Brown." Behold, our state Democratic Party in action. Red state Dems are like orphans in the wilderness these days, and we are outnumbered by crazies.





Same thing in Texas where candidates like Wendy Davis and Letitia Van de Putte couldn't overcome the basic sexism of aging white ranchers, oil men, and the loony misogynist Christians who turned out to vote. What's more astonishing is that women turned out to vote against women candidates too. Another mystery of this election. Where were the "majority" of Dem and Independent women, and why didn't they care?

And then there was Kansas, allegedly a state where the Tea Party had turned their economy upside down, so they were ready to clean house starting with Governor Sam Brownback. Also, Independent Greg Orman was supposed to handily beat the incumbent Senator Pat Roberts, then caucus with the Dems. Except that none of that happened. The polls were all wrong. The people voted for Brownback as if everything was just okey dokey with them. And their absentee Senator, who doesn't even live in Kansas anymore, was re-elected in a landslide. Go figure.

My husband said no one should be suprised that a red state stayed red, but what was all that reporting about? How could everyone be so wrong this time?









Maybe it was delusional on the Dems' part to think states like Georgia or Kentucky - or Texas, a longshot - could be blue in this election, that they would elect a Michelle Nunn or an Alison Lundergan Grimes. But it's just as mysterious that Kentucky re-elected an unpopular guy like Mitch McConnell, while keeping their blue Governor and State Legislature. The popularity of Governors like John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Scott in Florida, and Scott Walker in Wisconsin is a conundrum that cannot be explained easily. Those states had huge "get out the vote" movements, and actually have real Democratic Parties, unlike in Tennessee. Yet it all seemed to make no difference in the end, and I'm sure their Dem voters feel just as puzzled as ever.



Many say that Democratic candidates failed because they "ran away from the President" and from the victory that is Obamacare. But to those of us in Red States who understand swing voters, it seemed logical that the candidates wouldn't want to draw too much attention to Obama or to the unpopular idea of ACA. I think it was a lose-lose situation - damned if they did, damned if they didn't.

Maybe history will explain this election, if we live long enough. Or we can just blame the black President like most of the media. If it really is that simple, and that racist, I just don't want to know.

Maybe we Dems just had too much hope, and got ahead of ourselves, and now we are turning on ourselves and playing the blame game. The fall-out in the Democratic party is already happening. There are calls to throw out Harry Reid as Senate Minority Leader, and toss Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as head of the Democratic Party. The head of the DCCC, Steve Israel, resigned a few days after the election.

All this blaming and firing won't really help us understand the Midterm from Hell, but I guess it will seem like progress. Meanwhile, most Dems are taking time off from the internet, watching Netflix, listening to soothing music and wishing this was all a bad dream.
























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Thursday, October 4, 2012

First Debate Quote Round-Up

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When I got on the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney.
But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn't know anything about that.
. . . So, you see, the man on stage last night does not want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney's decisions and what he's been saying for the last year. And that's because he knows full well that we don't want what he's been selling for the last year.
So Governor Romney may dance around his positions, but if you want to be president you owe the American people the truth.
So here's the truth: Governor Romney cannot cannot pay for his $5 trillion tax plan his tax plan without blowing up the deficit or sticking it to the middle class. That's the math.
~ President Obama speaking the day after the debate in Denver, via Jed Lewison of Daily Kos


[Voters] saw another guy that got testy, who interrupted – and interrupted the moderator. I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney. We should rethink that for the next debate.
~ obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter

You know you've lost the debate when you start blaming the moderator for a poor performance.
. . . I think Jim Lehrer did what all good moderators do, which is to let the candidates describe their differences, Both candidates got an ample amount of time to make their case to the American people, and I think Gov. Romney was the clear winner in that contest.
~ Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom

[Obama] was very very bad last night. He looked depressed, he looked anemic. Those big ears poking out. . . You Could See At The End Of This Debate, Anniversary Or Not, Michelle Wanted To Go Home With Mitt.
~ Anne Coulter on Fox News via Media Matters

[Romney] made a good testimony, but he will be indicted for perjury because he's lying. When you take what he said tonight and compare it to his proposals, to what he has said, to what he has represented, to the Ryan Plan, it does not match what he said tonight. So how are we going to be impressed with someone that made a very passionate and articulate series of lies tonight.
~ Reverend Al Sharpton quoted by Mediaite


It wasn’t an MSNBC debate, was it? . . . Where was Obama tonight? He should watch — well, not just ‘Hardball,’ Rachel [Maddow], he should watch you, he should watch the Reverend Al [Sharpton], he should watch Lawrence [O'Donnell], he would learn something about this debate. There's a hot debate going on in this country. Do you know where it’s being held? Here on this network is where we're having the debate. We have our knives out. We go after the people and the facts. What was he doing tonight? He went in there disarmed.
. . . He (Romney) was going to dominate the time. He was going to be aggressive. He was going to push the moderator around, which he did effectively. He was going to relish the evening, enjoying it. Nothing to do with the words he spoke. Here's my question for Obama. I know he likes to say he doesn't watch cable television, but maybe he should start. Maybe he should start. I don't know how he let Romney get away with the crap he threw out tonight about social security,
~ Chris Matthews after the debate, quoted by Politico

I had one overwhelming impression. I did everything I could not to reach it, but it looked like Romney wanted to be there and President Obama didn’t want to be there.
. . . It seemed like Romney was happy to be there. Obama gave me the impression that the whole thing was kind a lot of trouble.
~ CNN's James Carville, former Clinton Adviser

Mitt Romney, trailing in the polls, needed to prove tonight that he could stand on stage with President Barack Obama as an equal and a plausible president of the United States.
He did that in the crucial first 40 minutes of Wednesday night's debate, addressing Obama respectfully, even warmly — but then tangling with a sometimes hazy and professorial Obama on taxes and deficits.
. . . But Romney's core success was that he won by not losing: He has barely weathered a campaign that reduced him to a smaller figure than President Obama. On stage, they were roughly the same size.
~ Ben Smith on BuzzFeed

. . . what people saw last night, I think, was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even address them. And I think even the liberal press reacted with shock at this revelation and I find it fascinating, now this morning after they’ve slept, to watch ‘em all scrambling around to clean up the mess the president left on the floor last night.
. . . I think you saw him admit it the night before when he delivered the pizzas. He said, you know, ‘They’re making me do this work.’ He didn’t want to prepare for this debate. He’s lazy and disengaged
~ Romney surrogate John Sununu to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC

The usual talking points were hurled back and forth. Yet Romney appeared better able to turn his into more specific attacks on Obama, particularly because the president was in a awkward position: How do you defend yourself from the charge that you should have done more? Obama pointed to accomplishments and positive developments in the economy, tax cuts for the middle class, his successful rescue of the auto industry. But that didn't fully answer Romney's bottom-line accusation.
The president was also placed at a disadvantage when Romney adopted what might be called the Monty Python defense. Obama repeatedly accused the former Massachusetts governor of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut that would likely increase the deficit, force massive cuts in government spending on education, health care, research, environmental programs, and the like, and lead to higher tax bills for the middle class. In response, Romney essentially said, "It does not."
~ David Corn on Mother Jones

I mean with the enormous problems facing our country, the fact that we are the focus is just unbelievable to me, particularly given the fact that you know at another part of the debate, both candidates talked about the importance of education. We are America's biggest classroom. We touch children across the country in every home, whether -- whether you have books in your home or computer or not, almost everyone has a television set.
. . . this is not about the budget. It has to be about politics.
~ Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS, on CNN

Obama supporters are seething that he played rope-a-dope all evening without even trying for a knock-out, but in a debate that often got mired in the weeds of policy, Romney didn’t exactly knock Obama out, either. Romney did himself some good in countering his image as a cartoon cutout of a greedy capitalist, but his performance was probably most satisfying to people already committed to voting for him. And the debate was so languid, so poorly moderated – the candidates were allowed to ramble on into the weeds of policy most people don’t know much about (Dodd-Frank, anyone…?) — and frankly, so dull, it’s hard to imagine many people sat through it all, unless they were either partisans for one side, members of the media, or part of a focus group.
~ Joy Reid on The Grio

It was the story of the night: Obama not just in a defensive crouch but a stunningly conservative one at that, and Romney pressing his indictment of Obama while looking authoritative, eminently reasonable, and even emotive at times.
For what it’s worth, I don’t fault Obama for some of his strategic choices. Liberals are stewing over his refusal to slap Romney for his infamous 47-percent riff. I think Obama made the right call. Pretty much anyone for whom that was likely to matter has already heard the Romney recording. By reminding them of it, Obama risked looking overly snide or cutting.
. . . Will it matter? Certainly not as much as the liberal hyper-ventilators seem to think. As the political scientists tell us, there are only so many undecided voters who tune into these spectacles. The only way a debate could really move poll numbers is if a candidate committed an easily understood, self-sabotaging gaffe that instantly ricocheted across the cable dial. Obama clearly avoided that tonight, and so I don’t expect a major tightening.
~ Noam Scheiber on The New Republic

Overall, I’d expect the polls to tighten, perhaps even substantially. But how much they tighten will be very telling. Wednesday was as good a night as Romney can expect to have in the rest of this campaign, in front of as big an audience as he’ll get, with a maximum of media coverage. So his bounce will help tell us how many voters really remain persuadable, or at least how many of the persuadable voters are paying attention to the final events of the campaign. If that number is high, Romney should close the gap substantially, if not pull slightly ahead. If it’s low, he won’t see much bounce, and it will be that much harder to see his path to victory.
Think about the people you know: How many of the Obama voters who thought Romney won the debate seem ready to change their vote today? Personally, I don’t know any Obama voters who thought he won the debate. But I also don’t know any Obama voters who have said they’re now supporting Romney.
~ Ezra Klein on Washington Post
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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Romney Bombarded with Scathing Advice from GOP

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We're in a world of hurt if we can't get that explanation to the public to the voters regarding what the choices are. He (Romney) should be very aggressive and he should be adamant in his attacks . . . he needs to be severely aggressive.
~ Sarah Palin on Fox, via Last Word

Gotta use those buzzwords. Gotta say "socialist." You gotta do that to get people's attention.
Bill O'Reilly on Fox, via Last Word

The Romney campaign's going to have to make some changes. They're going to have to go ideological! They cannot continue on this 'Obama Mr. Nice Guy' bit. They just can't do it. It isn't going to work.
. . . I'm not saying go out and say Obama's a bad guy. But he's got to be tied to this economy. His policies, his ideas, his ideology. Liberalism is still a dirty word in this country - use it!
Rush Limbaugh on his radio show

Speak Up, Mitt!
. . . It’s not enough to float like a butterfly. You have to sting like a bee. No sting, no victory.
~ William Kristol on the Weekly Standard

If you can't beat Barack Obama with this record, Then shut down the party. Shut it down, start new with new people. Because this is a gimme election, or at least it should be.
And the millions . . . I keep going back to the millions and millions of dollars paid to these political consultants.
Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns; who've run campaigns that have failed; who have message campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired. I don't understand that. I don't know why those are the people you hire.
If I'm hiring messaging people, I'm finding out, for instance, who did the original Geico gecko commercial, because that guy or gal who did that, actually knows how to brand something.
And if you're Mitt Romney, with all of your expertise and all of your knowledge about how the economy works, and you're in this, you have one shot, man. This is going to be the first line of your obituary: you won or you lost. It's all on the line for the country, and it's all on the line for you.
~ Conservative Laura Ingraham on her radio show 9-10-12

Mitt Romney should be up by five, six points.
You know the way to stop the doubters? Start winning in these polls. Start winning in significant margins and look like you’re ahead in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Then people won’t have a mini-panic.
. . . For the Romney campaign to stick their heads in the sand and say just business as usual, keep goin' along the same path - I think that is very dangerous.
~ Laura Ingraham on Fox and Friends, via Mediaite

Mitt Romney does not have the feeling, the visceral, philosophically sound feeling for what's wrong with the progressive movement in this country. He's a good man, a good fellow. He'd be a much better president than the one we've got. But he doesn't -- what I've said before about him is conservatism is a second language for him. And he is still learning it. And it's hard to learn this thing in the midst of a high-stakes presidential campaign.
~ George Will

Romney needs a busier schedule to make clear what he's fighting for. He can't afford to waste the three weeks until the first debate.
Romney needs a narrative, a story, so voters understand he's going to bring change to a country that 70% of them believe is on the wrong track.
~ Alex Castellanos on CNN Political Ticker

On Romney's 9/11 Speech to the National Guard Association
This was a wasted opportunity when he could have shown some mettle. His foreign policy message, not unlike his domestic policy message, is getting put through the Boston blender, it seems, coming out mush. That would be mush with no flavor.
Romney wants to rise above the fray, which might work if he had a hatchet man at the ready. But so far he’s not unleased VP nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to hit Obama where he is most vulnerable.
. . . Now is not the time for sweet vignettes; it’s time for him to seize the moment. That requires Romney to sharpen and beef up his message.
~ Jennifer Rubin on Washington Post

Romney Adrift
The economy’s a mess, but thanks to a hapless campaign, the GOP nominee is behind with time running out.
. . . This is a very close race and one that still could go either way. But the odds of Romney capitalizing on this economy, and the opportunity it affords, seem lower than they were before the conventions. If Republicans and Romney supporters are growing nervous, they should be.
~ Charlie Cook on National Journal

This is a true test of Romney's resolve. He's like the pilot of a plane rolling down the runway for takeoff. There's a tree line at the end of the runway that he has to clear. He's sure he'll make it. He's gaining speed, getting some lift, but he's still not high enough, and at about three-quarters down the runway, a lot of passengers are getting scared. Does Romney keep going according to plan, confident he'll clear the trees when the time comes? Or does he try some last-minute maneuver?
Romney is an experienced leader, with an executive sensibility to the core. But he's never had to make a decision like this.
~ Byrom York on Washington Examiner

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Friday, July 13, 2012

Circular Firing Squad: Team Romney Slams Beltway "Bedwetters"

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And the circular firing squad continues in the Republican Party:

Story Via Politico
A senior Romney strategist said Thursday that the campaign had a plan and wouldn’t be distracted from implementing it, despite pressure from outsiders. The strategist called the new charges part of an old line of attack that had already been thoroughly aired.

“We went through this in the primary,” the adviser said. “You have a lot of people inside the Beltway, who like to sit back and be armchair quarterbacks, strategists who talk to you and don’t go on the record. We have a plan. We know what the plan is, and we’re going to implement the plan.”

The adviser added: “We aren’t reacting to what the Obama campaign does. … We aren’t reacting to what Republican strategists do. We’ve got a plan to win. We know what it takes and that’s what we’re going to do. All of this hew and cry, you know, from the bedwetters who get to sit on the sidelines, aren’t going to affect what we’re going to do and our plan.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bye-bye Advisor Bedwetter.
Mr. I Enjoy Firing People would like to have a word.
~ comment by mikedallas23 on Daily Kos

The question is: Is Republican bedwetting a pre-existing condition, and are they insured for it under Obamacare?
~ comment by steamed rice on Daily Kos

Team Romney = The Cylons
The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan.
~ comment by MBishop1 on Daily Kos

At what point will Americans get tired of the small minded meaness of this kind of language ? "Bedwetters" Is that Presidential ?
~ comment by Dvalkure on Daily Kos

I'm thinking the anti-Romney people in the Republican party might be on the verge of finding the candidate they want to replace him should the Romney campaign self-destruct, and I have no idea who that might be. Otherwise, I'd think this was delicious.
Oh, what the hell. It's delicious, and I love the fact that on top of all this Politico can't spell ("hue and cry").
~ comment by Dave in Northridge on Daily Kos

Mittbot goes Frankenstein on his Own Party.
Calling his own Party members "Bedwetters" is Typical Mittbot behavior.
Also Typical for any Imature, 6 Year Old Child.
Sooner or later, the Torches and Pitchforks are going to come out.
I Can't Wait.
~ comment by Brian26239 on Daily Kos















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