Tag Archives: 2012 American presidential election

Does this election even matter?

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Frank Rich isn’t at all convinced:

But isn’t the tea party yesterday’s news, receding into the mists of history along with its left-wing doppelgänger, Occupy Wall Street? So it might seem. It draws consistently low poll numbers, earning just a 25 percent approval rating in a Wall Street Journal–NBC News survey in September. The tea-party harbinger from 2008, Sarah Palin, and the bomb throwers who dominated the primary process of 2012, led by the congressional tea-party caucus leader Michele Bachmann, were vanquished and lost whatever national political clout they had, along with much of their visibility (even on Fox News). So toxic is the brand that not one of the 51 prime-time speakers at the GOP convention in Tampa dared speak its name, including such tea-party heartthrobs as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Scott Brown, who became an early tea-party hero for unexpectedly taking Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in 2010, has barely alluded to the affiliation since.

All this evidence is misleading. As one conservative commentator, Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway, wrote during the GOP convention, it means nothing that Republican leaders don’t mention the tea party anymore. “In reality, of course the Republican party of 2012 is pretty much the tea party at this point,” he wrote. “One need only look at the party platform and listen to what the speakers are actually saying to recognize that fact.” He saw the tea party as “likely to see its influence increase after the November elections regardless of what happens to the Romney/Ryan ticket”—and rightly so. Though the label itself had to be scrapped—it has been permanently soiled by images of mad-dog protesters waving don’t tread on me flags—its ideology is the ideology of the right in 2012. Its adherents will not back down or fade away, even if Obama regroups and wins the lopsided Electoral College victory that seemed in his grasp before the first debate. If anything, the right will be emboldened to purge the GOP of the small and ideologically deviant Romney claque that blew what it saw as a “historic” opportunity to deny a “socialist” president a second term.

Preparing for the worst

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One of the fascinating aspects of the three debates so far (two presidential, and one vice presidential) has been to watch how the candidates have handled their alleged vulnerabilities. In each debate, one or both of the candidates had a significant weakness or flaw that was ripe to be exploited by his opponent.

The thing is, everyone knew this. And that means the candidates — and more importantly, their debate prep teams — knew this even better. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the candidates have had some of their strongest moments on issues that were expected to trip them up.

In the above video, President Obama takes Mitt Romney to task for his criticism regarding the consulate attack in Benghazi, leaving the former Massachusetts governor flailing a bit in his response. This was supposed to be Romney’s trump card, and Obama — who had clearly been waiting to respond to this — instead turned it into perhaps his strongest moment of the night.

We saw similar dynamics during the vice presidential debate. Most expected Joe Biden to dominate Paul Ryan on foreign policy and for the opposite to occur in relation to Medicare. But in truth, something a little closer to the opposite took place: Ryan opened fire very early on regarding the attack in Libya, leaving Biden to issue a less than reassuring rebuttal about America’s resolve. Meanwhile, Biden proved perhaps more convincing on Medicare than Ryan did, never allowing the Congressman to drag the conversation into the weeds.

In the first presidential debate, the largest elephant in the room was Mitt Romney’s 47% comment, which Obama — in his dazed and confused performance that night — never managed to bring up. But assuredly Romney had a response all cued up beforehand for that as well. (Interestingly, Obama managed to work in a reference to the 47% issue on the last question of last night’s debate, a phenomenal tactical move that denied Romney the chance to use a prepackaged and rehearsed rebuttal.)

As the upcoming final debate next Monday is on foreign policy, technically the subject should be moving back onto Obama’s turf. But if there’s anything these first three debates have taught us (other than the enormous versatility of the common binder), it’s that waiting to pounce on your opponent’s weakest point does not always pay dividends.

And so it begins: Romney-Obama Part Deux

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https://twitter.com/Romneys_Binder/status/258387741010714626 https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/258387804915122178 https://twitter.com/jamespoulos/status/258387269646434304 https://twitter.com/AntDeRosa/status/258386964003307520 https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/258384502819287040 https://twitter.com/AntDeRosa/status/258384169997062147 https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/258383720841637888 https://twitter.com/jaypinho/status/258383629397393409 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/258382281478131713 https://twitter.com/max_read/status/258381210584236032 https://twitter.com/BorowitzReport/status/258380850171883520 https://twitter.com/emilybazelon/status/258380567362535424 https://twitter.com/EnFogg/status/258377672420376576 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/258377273823096833 https://twitter.com/DavidGrann/status/258374894163734529 https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/258374685446766592 https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/258372870462390272 https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/258372255577419776 https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/258371159916175361 https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/258370817132486657 https://twitter.com/AntDeRosa/status/258370370179067904 https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/258370096181952513 https://twitter.com/chrisrockoz/status/258363741417123840 https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/258356063961747456

I will be trying something new tonight.

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Instead of simply live-blogging the presidential debate, I hope to live-tweet it. But they won’t be my tweets (or at least, not primarily): instead, I’ll be updating the blog post with the best tweets from around the Internet (or at least, from my Twitter feed).

I’m doing this because my viewing experience for the vice presidential debate last week was significant enhanced by the collective humor of the Internet hive mind. Thus, why not share that experience with all of you?

(Disclaimer: There’s a very good chance I won’t be able to do this because of work-related or other distractions — in which case please ignore all of the above.)

Let the games begin!

The stakes are high. No, even higher.

Humor, Media, Politics, , , , , ,

The Atlantic Wire‘s Elspeth Reeve delivers a tongue-in-cheek exhortation on tonight’s presidential debate:

However overhyped you think Tuesday’s presidential debate is, the real cold hard truth is that it cannot be hyped enough. The stakes are impossibly high—not just for who gets to be the most powerful person on Earth, but also for the people who get paid to talk about the most powerful person on Earth, which is a powerful though considerably lesser position.

Just try imagining the stakes right now. Are you thinking about the stakes? They’re really high, right? Like these are some of the highest stakes you’ve ever seen. Well scratch that. It’s an optical illusion. The stakes are actually even higher. Unimaginably high stakes even in your imagination. These stakes might be so high they’re overwhelming.

Later:

Combatant: The media’s Drama Club

Mission: The opposite of the “everything sucks” caucus — the drama club must say this matters immensely. Members must have the most extreme reaction to debate, and make the most concrete prediction based on it — an extremely dangerous move because you could be proven wrong in just a few weeks.

Strategy: Express your shock and horror that the debate was the most indisputably consequential moment in the presidential election for your candidate — because he blew it.  The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan had a widely-noticed freakout after the first debate. He’s already previewing an eruption following tonight’s that could rival the first. “The ground Obama has lost in Oct. is vast, underscored by new #s on lost female voters. Everything hinges on tonight,” he tweets. Variant: Express rapturous joy at your guy’s victory. WARNING: Joy must be rapturous for your reaction to get attention, since it’s expected you’ll be biased toward thinking your team’s awesome.

Pre-debate jitters

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Andrew Sullivan has them:

What Obama has to do is show how he is the change, how the GOP is determined to block it, and how he needs re-election to get it done. In the first debate, he was so defensive, so determined to protect his record, so eager not to look smug, he let Romney make the arguments for change. And that’s what excited voters. If Obama allows Romney to offer change versus more-of-the-same, he’s toast. Instead he has to remind us that he has changed the direction for America but that he needs more time to change it some more.

To wit:

more infrastructure investment in energy (cleaner carbon and non-carbon), transportation, and education, all designed for future growth; a shared long-term Grand Bargain – in more revenues and less entitlement and defense spending – to get us back on fiscal track; and a preference in all policies for building the middle class. I’d also favor a new policy: commit to break up the biggest banks, as Jon Huntsman suggested in the primaries. If I had my druthers, I’d also eliminate every tax deduction past a certain percentage of income.

It’s harder to represent change when you are the incumbent. But when you’ve been stymied by the House GOP for two years, you have a decent excuse.