All we want are the facts, Sir!

Detective Joe Friday in Dragnet.

Many of us remember Detective Joe Friday’s insistence on the facts in the 1950s tv series, Dragnet. Today’s websites devoted to fact-checking unavoidably remind us of that earnest detective. But the facts being checked are not criminal (we hope), but rather political, during yet another heated presidential campaign in which the truth is too often a casualty.

The Nation’s Ari Melber discusses the impact of fact-checking on the Obama and Romney campaigns:

A tabulation of recent rulings from PolitiFact, a prominent but increasingly controversial website devoted to fact-checking candidates' claims, found that “statements by Mitt Romney and other Republicans” were rated false “twice as often as statements by President Obama and other Democrats.” That's a lot more false statements by Republicans, which makes it harder to cling to the false equivalency that “both sides do it.”

Or maybe not.

A snap poll of conservative reactions shows that the study of Politifact, from George Mason's Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), proves the conservative theory that the fact-checkers are out to get Republicans.

“This discrepancy is not because the Romney campaign is egregiously truth-challenged,” explains The Weekly Standard, “but because the 'fact checking' enterprise is more often than not partisan.” When you're done attacking the messenger, go for the refs! That approach may be welcomed by CMPA, however, which has played up its past studies as proof that life is hard for the GOP. (Press release headlines include “GOP Candidates Were Big Joke to TV Comics in 2011,” “TV News Coverage Helped Sink Santorum…”, and, for good measure, “Arab Media Boost Obama.” Oh that Arab Media—it just loves American presidents.)

In the end, it's true that your view of the findings depends on your view of Politifact, though, because if you think they generally get it right, then cumulative data like this is still bad for the right:

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Mitt Romney and the Confidence Fairy

Romney. Credit: Public Domain.

A win by Mitt Romney this November would free the Confidence Fairy to miraculously cure the U.S. economy. Over at the NY Times, Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman explains:

Mitt Romney is optimistic about optimism. In fact, it’s pretty much all he’s got. And that fact should make you very pessimistic about his chances of leading an economic recovery.

As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue — weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch.

In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”

Are you feeling reassured? 

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Who will stand up for the poor in the 2012 presidential election?

Courtesy of parentingpink.com.

While the rest of the punditry swoons over the dress Michelle Obama wore last night and her “hitting it out of the ballpark” convention speech, Jim Wallis reminds us this morning of those whom both our Democratic and Republican political leaders too often overlook:

We've got a problem in this country. I know it, you know it, and the politicians know it too, but most won't even say it out loud: poverty. We're bracing ourselves for next month's release of the 2011 numbers -- most economists predict that we're looking at the highest rates of poverty in fifty years.

In the years before the recession, we were making some strides. We had programs like Head Start that helped build strong kids from the get-go. We had high employment, and things were moving in the right direction. But even then, when we had budget surpluses, we couldn't get the nation's political leaders to focus on a real commitment to significantly reducing poverty in America. Then the recession hit, and everything changed. Many of those who were in poverty last decade were pushed into "deep" poverty (less than half of the poverty line) and we have an emerging group called the "newly poor"-- those suburban families whose houses are under water, who can't pay their gas, and whose six-figure jobs dissolved when the bubbles burst. The face and the type of poverty in this country is changing rapidly: suburbs in the largest metro areas saw their poor populations increase 25 percent from 2000 to 2008 -- almost five times faster than in the cities, according to Brookings.

If you're not poor, and you don't have friends who are poor, you might have little clue about what it's like to be in poverty. For too many people before the recession, poverty was about "them." About "those people." Now, poverty is "us" -- those sitting next to us in the pews, fellow workers laid off, brothers or sisters with their houses underwater. We have a whole group of hardworking people, through no fault of their own, who are slipping through the cracks and under the poverty line. According to the Census, nearly half of Americans are under the poverty line or barely above it: they are one paycheck, one health crisis, one breath away from falling below that line. Folks who used to donate their used clothes to Salvation Army are now shopping there; families who used to donate to food banks are standing in their ever-growing lines.

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Where's that vision thing in the 2012 campaign?

As the 4th of July approaches during the lackluster 2012 campaign, Drew Western at the LA Times points out that neither Obama nor Romney offers an inspiring vision to disheartened Americans:

Americans today aren't interested in slogans and sound bites. They want the candidates to offer them a vision, but so far neither Mitt Romney nor President Obama has done so.

Read the entire column here.

The “unspeakably boring election so far”

2008: McCain vs. Obama.

2012: Romney vs. Obama.

Confession: when I read Roger Simon’s post at Politico this morning titled “The ‘meh’-ing of the president,” I had to Google the meaning of  'meh' in the urban dictionary, and I quote: “An interjection used to imply indifference towards a subject; ‘verbal shrug’.

Well, yeah, the 2012 presidential campaign is boring, but not more so, I would argue, than the general election became in 2008 after the Democratic primary ended, and we were subjected to the sparring between Obama and McCain, spiced up occasionally by Biden’s gaffes and Palin’s naïve pizzaz.

Anyway, Simon’s injection of humor into the boring, if not tragically uninspiring, presidential campaign of 2012 between Obama and Romney offers momentary relief and encourages reflection on our choices this November. Simon asks:

Where is the fun? Where is the excitement? Where is the sheer heart-pounding, loin-stirring, thrill-going-up-the-leg tingle that is the hallmark of a U.S. presidential race?

Nowhere. The New York Times Magazine made it official Sunday on its “Meh List,” which each week catalogs those aspects of American life that are unspeakably boring.

And there it was at No. 3: “The election so far.”

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Romney the politician vs. Obama the would-be “transformative president”

I don’t get it. Why is the media so stirred up over Mitt Romney’s portrayal as a politician? The Etch-a-Sketch candidate, etc. Would our astute pundits prefer that Mitt pose as a saintly gentleman, far above politics, who once elected will ride into Washington on a white horse and drive out all of the evildoers? Oops. That was Barack Obama in ’08. And he didn’t even wait until he assumed office; he lunged to the center immediately after the DNC anointed him as nominee.

As recently as last September, liberal NY Times columnist Charles Blow, who supported Obama’s candidacy from day one, asked his readers:

 

Does he have any interest in becoming the Obama of people’s imaginations, the one they thought they saw through the showers of streamers, and explosions of confetti in 2008 — the man who only ever existed in their own minds? 

Is the “transformative president” more than an opportunistic transformer, shifting shape to suit the moment, but truly settling on none? 

Blow continues:

He {Obama} isn’t only battling a calcifying cynicism about the inefficacy of government in general, he’s battling the rapidly hardening public perception that he himself is a product of what I call the doughnut doctrine of leadership — soft, glazy, hollow in the middle and ideally suited for getting dunked.

Ouch.

Politicizing the positive jobs report

It’s unfortunate that the media is primarily presenting a positive jobs report in terms of the 2012 presidential election campaign instead of first seeking to inform the public of what the new numbers may mean for America’s struggling families.

Politico’s Alexander Burns and Ben White offer a typical analysis of the latest development on the economic front:

President Barack Obama hasn’t unfurled a “Mission Accomplished” banner just yet. But Friday’s jobs report showing unemployment dropping to 8.3 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, is an unexpected boon for Obama’s reelection bid and a serious hurdle for his top competitor, Mitt Romney, who has staked his campaign on a jobs-and-economy message.

While 8 percent-plus unemployment is still a perilous number for any incumbent, the clear downward trend in the jobless rate complicates the Republican narrative that Obama is an out-and-out economic failure who has no hope of turning around the economy.

You have to read further before the article mentions in passing how the recently released jobs numbers might be received by those whom they most critically affect:

“Those numbers are good news for the country and they are good news, politically, for the president,” said Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “It puts particular pressure on Mitt Romney as the nominee to offer a big, bold, sweeping agenda of reform and economic growth and contrasts with the president’s vision. He’s simply not going to be able to run a campaign built on a foundation of criticism.”

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Will Obama take his cue from Elizabeth Warren in his reelection campaign?

Put aside the fact that President Obama caved to Republican resistance in his failure to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she created and consider this:  

Paul Starobin at the New Republic now suggests that President Obama take his cue from the scrappy defender of the middle class in his reelection campaign.

Pointing out that the women’s vote may be even more critical in 2012 than it was in 2008, Starobin writes:

Elizabeth Warren is poised to thrash Scott Brown in their marquee U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, and the reason is simple: Women voters love her. In the most recent poll, in December, Warren and Brown were virtually tied amongst men, but Warren led by 13 percentage points, 51 percent to 38 percent, amongst women.

Warren’s commanding lead is not about her gender (Masssachusetts has never before elected a woman to the Senate or governor’s office: Brown defeated Martha Coakley just two years ago) or even her party (the state has a history of voting for GOP moderates like Brown: Think ex-Governor Mitt Romney and, further back, Senator Ed Brooke.) Rather, she owes her ascendency to the fact that her communitarian message resonates so strongly with females.

President Obama ought to pay heed: Warren’s campaign can offer important lessons to his own. He too will need to secure women voters if he wants to earn re-election. And he, too, could do so by adopting Warren’s proud communitarian appeal.

Starobin continues:

THE PUREST DISTILLATION of the Warren message can be seen in the video, shot back in August during her appearance at the Massachusetts home of a supporter, which went viral on the Internet and alternately met with applause amongst liberals and apoplexy amongst conservatives.

It’s easy to see why. With evident passion, Warren weighs in against George Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich” and, hands knifing the air, rejects the notion that she is stirring up “class warfare.” Not at all, she says. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate…” It was a riveting performance that proved her skill as a retail politician, someone able to relate to regular folks—there was not a trace here of the Harvard Law professor with a specialty in bankruptcy statutes or the policy wonk whose 5,000 word treatise in Democracy led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

According to the Civic Practices Network:

Communitarianism emerged in the 1980s as a response to the limits of liberal theory and practice. Its dominant themes are that individual rights need to be balanced with social responsibilities, and that autonomous selves do not exist in isolation, but are shaped by the values and culture of communities. Unless we begin to redress the balance toward the pole of community, communitarians believe, our society will continue to become normless, self-centered, and driven by special interests and power seeking.

Starobin concludes:

… Communitarianism is not only about ideals, but about practical action. Obama needs to talk more about his particular policy proposals and how they link up with America’s “underlying social contract,” in Warren’s phrase. That’s perhaps the most promising way to reconnect his campaign, so far lacking in any sense of grand aspiration, with its natural demographic base.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Warren for igniting a conversation in the public domain about a too long-neglected topic: the American social contract.

Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson enters presidential race

Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson in 2009. Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com.

A couple of days ago, LadyBoomerNYC posted her support of the recently formed Justice Party’s candidate for president, Rocky Anderson. 

According to his wiki page, Anderson is a well-qualified challenger in opposition to Obama and whoever emerges as the nominee from the messy GOP primary.

Coincidentally, a Washington Post-ABC poll reported today (Friday) that more than two-thirds of Americans would consider voting for a third-party candidate.

LBNYC said:

Perhaps there is a choice. Say what? …and we don’t have to vote for the worst of two evils. (Sorry Obama fans, if there are any of you left.)

Rocky Anderson for President! He’s running on the newly formed Justice Party ticket and telling it like it is: “I consider this a second party.” “We need a new paradigm where people are committed to representing the public interest.”

The Boomer’s post includes this video of Anderson’s appearance on Democracy Now:

Could Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman defeat Obama?

Jon Huntsman. Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com.

It must be apparent by now to most sentient beings that the results of the Iowa caucuses offered nary a candidate capable of igniting even a modicum of enthusiasm in the 2012 presidential race. And as E. J. Dionne, a worshiper of Barack Obama in 2008, recently observed:

As the attention of the politically minded has focused on the rather more down-to-earth contests in Iowa and New Hampshire that will help determine which Republican will face Mr. Obama in November, let us ponder what the coming year will bring for someone who must now seek re-election as a mere mortal.

Oh, but E. J., out there on the horizon in the New Hampshire Republican primary, Jon Huntsman could emerge as a candidate whose qualifications for the presidency just might excite currently lethargic Republicans, Democrats, and independents sufficiently to defeat incumbent Obama. It seems as if, Obama, like Icarus, flew too close to the sun and got his wings melted.

In today’s LA Times, Michael A. Memoli reports from N.H.:

In its endorsement of Jon Huntsman, the Boston Globe made largely the same case for the Utah governor’s candidacy that the candidate himself has to New Hampshire voters -- that he is the rare GOP candidate prioritizing the national interest over ideology.

The Globe, which has a reach into many southern New Hampshire homes, snubbed former home state Gov. Mitt Romney for the second time in its endorsement for the first-in-the-nation primary, after backing John McCain in the 2008 vote.

Both Huntsman and Romney, the paper’s editorial board writes, "have track records of success" and "have shown the breadth of spirit to lead the nation."

"But while Romney proceeds cautiously, strategically, trying to appease enough constituencies to get himself the nomination, Huntsman has been bold," the Globe said.

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Name It Change It: media sexism in 2011

Image courtesy of Name It Change It.org

I feel compelled to post this email from Name It Change It as 2011 comes to a close, and we face another presidential election year in which politicians and the media will no doubt continue their habitual sexist, misogynist ways. 

We can only hope that little by little we’ll be able to raise the consciousness of the few who may one day lead the nation toward equality for all.

Dear Virginia,

“Bit of a heifer,” “Dumb twat,” “Great masturbation material.”

These were just some of outrageous terms thrown at women in politics in 2011. Every year Name It. Change It. takes a step back to examine the full year of the media coverage of women candidates and elected officials. Sadly, in 2011 we found no limit to how demeaning or insulting some media outlets and personalities felt they could be towards women candidates. The Name It. Change It. project is about pointing out sheer misogyny disguised as mere criticism.

This year, like last, contained some real doozies. Newsweek, Bill Maher, Tracey Morgan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and of course Huffington Post.

We invite you to read our Year in Political Media Sexism coverage and also to get angry. This sexism is wrong and needs to stop. That’s why we need your help in calling it out.

    Sign up for our Action Alerts to stay informed when sexist attacks and remarks are made.

    See something sexist? Report it to Name It. Change It.

    Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

2012 unfortunately will bring a whole host of sexist attacks against women candidates as the election season heats up. And we need your help. Will you join us in fighting sexism?

--The Name It. Change It. Team

Name It. Change It. is a collaborative campaign between She Should Run, Women's Media Center, and Political Parity, Name It. Change It. works to end sexist and misogynistic coverage of women candidates by all members of the press

It has come to this: the Hillary moment for 2012

Secretary Clinton attends the 2011 APEC Forum. Photo shows Clinton at the CEO Summit in Honolulu, Hawaii on Nov. 11. State Dept Image/Scott Chernis.

 

 

Would anyone at the Mile High Stadium in Denver in ’08, where the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama against a backdrop of Greek pillars, have dreamed that 2012 might be Hillary’s moment?

The recommendation by Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen in the Wall Street Journal that Democrats replace Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton on the ticket in 2012 is startling in its bluntness:

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion. 

He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor—one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy. 

Note: recall that Democratic leaders dissed Hillary in 08 for being “too polarizing.”

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Bill Clinton’s new book: “Back to Work”

Scanning the online reviews this morning of Bill Clinton’s new book, “Back to Work,” I’m reminded first of all that it’s naïve to expect objectivity in the mainstream media and second of all, one ought not to rely on the judgment of critics in determining the merits of a new publication. Nevertheless, we can gain a little background information and a few insights from such treatises as Jodi Cantor’s piece at the NY Times: With a Book, the Last Democrat in the White House Tries to Help the Current One:

Last summer, as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated the former president’s 65th birthday with a party at their rented Hamptons home, talk among their guests turned to President Obama’s travails over the debt crisis and doubts about his re-election. “I’m really trying to help him,” the white-haired former president said, shaking his head, “but he seems to have lost his narrative.”

Starting Tuesday, that help will take its most public form yet, in the form of a new book by Mr. Clinton, titled “Back to Work,” that makes a case for confidence in government and Mr. Obama’s jobs bill. The book marks a new and somewhat warmer stage in the two men’s rivalry and relationship, one that could benefit Mr. Obama. The awkward twist: the former president has been so frustrated at what he sees as the current one’s failure to explain his economic policies that he has literally decided to write his own version of the story. “He both sells it and wants them to sell it more,” said John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who also advises the current administration.

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Progressive ideas off the table during 2012 campaign debates?

Blogging at the Christian Science Monitor, Robert Reich offers a disheartening forecast of the coming 2012 presidential race between either Romney or Perry and incumbent Obama (emphases mine):

Whether it’s Romney or Perry, he’s sure to attack everything Obama has done or proposed. And Obama, for his part, will have to defend his positions and look for ways to counterpunch.

Hence, the parameters of public debate for the next fourteen months.

Within these narrow confines progressive ideas won’t get an airing. Even though poverty and unemployment will almost surely stay sky-high, wages will stagnate or continue to fall, inequality will widen, and deficit hawks will create an indelible (and false) impression that the nation can’t afford to do much about any of it – proposals to reverse these trends are unlikely to be heard.

Neither party’s presidential candidate will propose to tame CEO pay, create more tax brackets at the top and raise the highest marginal rates back to their levels in the 1950s and 1960s (that is, 70 to 90 percent), and match the capital-gains rate with ordinary income.

You won’t hear a call to strengthen labor unions and increase the bargaining power of ordinary workers.

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The irony of Michele Bachmann’s challenge to Barack Obama

There was a time when Democrats felt secure in holding on to the votes of a majority of women for they felt confident there was no place else for them to go. It’s the same dilemma faced too often by the battered wife. And that in a nutshell explains the abusive treatment Hillary Clinton took in 08 from the DNC and the superdelegates as they scurried off after Pied Piper Barack Obama, the hip young senator who was going to save the world solely by virtue of his personality and those sonorous speeches ringing with the cadences of an evangelical preacher.

Have you seen David Axelrod recently? The once oily smooth fellow with all the answers now looks harried and distraught. Must be tough facing the reality that 2012 isn’t going to be a repeat of 2008.

And then there’s the scary word out of Ames, IA that a conservative woman won the straw poll. Chris Cilliza at the  Washington Post:

AMES, Iowa — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann scored a victory in the GOP Ames Straw Poll on Saturday, a win likely to provide her considerable momentum as the 2012 race ramps up.

“What we saw happen today is this is the very first step toward taking the White House in 2012, and you have just sent a message that Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” said Bachmann (R-Minn.) after her victory was announced.

Got it, boys? A female GOP candidate is set to take down Barack Obama and from the mess the country is in today, you have to think she just might have a chance.

Bachmann’s rise is not just a wake up call for the good ol’ boys in the GOP, it’s also a wake up call for the good ol’ boys in the Democratic Party who called the shots in 08 and declared that racism was taboo, but it was open season for sexism. It must also be kind of depressing at this point for the Dems to realize that Bill and Hillary Clinton are both at the top of their game while Barack Obama is stumbling around, muttering something about “broken politics.”

A word to the wise, oh, great Democratic Party leaders: pick a leader next time.

“We need a leader who will fight for what he believes in”

It’s good I suppose that the liberal media and those euphoric lefties from 08 are coming to their senses as 2012 approaches and realizing the stuff they projected onto the Obama Rorshach test was mostly fantasy. Hence, Joan Walsh concluded on behalf of Democrats in her post at Salon the other day, “We need a leader who will fight for what he believes in.”

Walsh examines the latest poll numbers:

President Obama's post-Bin Laden poll bounce has predictably disappeared. Gallup's weekly tracking poll shows his approval rating down to 46 percent, with 44 percent disapproving,  from a recent high of 50. Wednesday's NBC/Wall St. Journal poll found a similar drop. That poll also looked at voters' opinions about the economy, and found overall, voters' disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy rose to 54 percent. The number of people who think the economy will get worse or stay the same over the next year climbed, and the number who think things will get better dropped. May's unemployment jump, combined with the inability to push another stimulus bill at a time when the focus is on cutting the deficit, gives Democrats reason to worry things won't get appreciably better any time soon.

It's against this backdrop that AP yesterday zeroed in on a so-called "intensity gap" between Democrats and Republicans heading into 2012. It quoted a recent Pew Research Center survey that found 84 percent of staunch conservatives strongly disapprove of the president, but only 64 percent of solid liberals strongly approve of him. But those numbers are different from what Gallup finds in its weekly polls, where Obama's approval rating with liberal Democrats is pretty stable, at a respectable 87 percent. Lately, though, he's suffered several dips with black and Latino voters: African Americans have mostly given Obama approval ratings in the 90s; they've been down in the low 80s several times in the last few months, including this week. Latino support also dropped from highs in the mid-60s to 54 percent this week.

Yes, Walsh’s analysis of the challenges the Dems are facing in 2012 brings back memories like how the Obama camp boasted their incredible funds represented primarily small donations from many donors. Come to find out Obama outpaced the Republicans in emptying Wall Street pockets. No wonder he was so easily persuaded to bail out those tycoons (I hear he gives them access, too):

Finally, it doesn't help that the president raised more money from Wall Street in 2008 than John McCain did, or that overall, Democrats got far more contributions from Wall Street than Republicans did that year ($88 million to $67 million). Of course, Wall Street tycoons are furious with Obama for even moderate attempts at financial regulatory reform: The New York Times revealed energetic efforts by the president and his campaign team to woo back petulant Wall Street donors with lavish dinners and special meetings. In a case of bad timing, the next day the campaign sent emails to its small-donor list coming "from" Barack Obama himself, with the subject "Dinner?" The president announced a lottery for donors who give as little as $5 to win a small dinner with him. It was a nice populist touch, but it contrasted sharply with his outreach to the wealthy, and by comparison, it might have sounded stingy. (Also, the line "I want to spend time with a few of you," given coverage of the Wall Street campaign, might not get people fired up. "A few" isn't inspiring. Dreaming of meeting "as many of you as possible during this campaign" would sound more like the old Obama.)

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