Reince Priebus is clearly not taking his own advice and continues to use extremist, crackpot language. TPM:

In an article published Wednesday on the conservative website RedState, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus blasted Democrats for supporting Planned Parenthood, while floating the damning suggestion that the likes of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) support infanticide.

“The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the House Democratic Leader, and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (in whose home state this hearing occurred) made funding Planned Parenthood an issue in the 2012 campaign,” Priebus wrote. “They should now all be held to account for that outspoken support. If the media won’t, then voters must ask the pressing questions: Do these Democrats also believe a newborn has no rights? Do they also endorse infanticide?”

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It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last time, but yesterday I was ashamed to be a registered member of the Democratic Party. Not only was it the tenth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which more than half of all Senate Democrats along with 81 House Democrats supported, but it was also a day when the Democratic Party handed the National Rifle Association its biggest victory this year without even putting up a fight.

I’m not simply referring to the fact that Harry Reid has decided to pull the Feinstein section of the Senate gun control bill that intend to ban 157 different military-style weapons, I’m also talking about the broad flaccidity of the Democrats on this issue — flaccidity all across the board, from activists to financiers to to the president to the party apparatus itself, the likes of which were on display ten years ago when too many Democrats endorsed the ill-fated crusade into Iraq.

Let’s start with Reid himself. Once again, Reid’s well-earned Droopy Dog caricature reemerged and allowed the majority party in the Senate to be steamrolled, not just by the Republicans and the NRA, but by at least 15 members of his own party — 15 Democrats, including Reid himself, have refused support a new assault weapons ban. It’s no secret that Reid is one of many congressional Democrats who’s sympathetic to the NRA, and the NRA has returned the favor with a friendly “B” grade for Droopy, signifying “a generally pro-gun candidate; may have opposed some pro-gun reform in the past.”

Reid said, “I’m not going to try to put something on the floor that won’t succeed. I want something that will succeed. I think the worst of all worlds would be to bring something to the floor and it dies there.”

So right off the bat, we’re not going to get an assault weapons ban, even with the most horrifying massacre since September 11 as the backdrop. But, worse, we’re not even going to get the completely ineffectual symbolic vote on the ban — a vote which the president demanded during what might’ve been the most emotional section of a State of the Union address in many years. Reid could very easily bring Feinstein’s bill to the floor as its own piece of legislation and offer it up for a futile symbolic vote, thus putting the biggest Wayne LaPierre fanboys on record opposing a ban on weapons that are solely designed to hunt people and nothing else, but he won’t do that.

Ten years ago, most of the Senate Democrats were more than willing to sign their name to the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States, primarily due to pressure from the Bush/Rove/Cheney White House which accused the Democrats of being weak on terrorism, but also because of the ongoing shellshock and post-traumatic stress of September 11. (Technically, the Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force was signed in October, 2002.) What can we gather from the disparity between voting for the war and against the assault weapons ban, each vote following on the heels of a national tragedy? Obviously, Democrats are more willing to vote for a misguided war than to prevent the proliferation of weapons of war.

This distinction is arguably the prime mover of the American gun culture. Our elected representatives — even the representatives of the liberal party — are all too willing to assist in authorizing roid-raging deadly force as a means of resolving problems. I would suggest that American warfare, and the willing participation of our elected leaders, is considerably more influential than nearly anything else when it comes to armed citizens resolving their own issues by similar gunfire. Ten years ago, and, in fact, throughout the history of the United States, exuberant warmongering has been a tragic measure of American patriotism. Strangely, and according to many historians, the 2nd Amendment was intended as a means of patriotic defense of the country, yet the people who self-identify as the most patriotic Americans have misappropriated the 2nd Amendment as a means of defense against the government — the government that we were forcefully commanded to unconditionally support during the lead-up to Iraq.

Here we are, ten years later, Democrats — commemorating an unnecessary war in Iraq by continuing to allow gun fetishists to purchase unnecessary weapons of war. And, ten years later, the Democratic Party has been entirely incapable of standing firm against either. Tens of thousands of American casualties in Iraq, and far too many casualties at the point of military assault weapons inside our schools, malls and theaters. Here’s to hoping the Democrats take a good look at various state legislators who are doing the heavy-lifting on gun control — not only for tactical advice against the Republicans but also to get a sense of who might be next in line for their posts.

(With apologies to Droopy Dog.)

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By Ben Cohen: In an incredibly long winded and monotonous rant on his Guardian blog Glenn Greenwald lambasts the progressive media for making hollow promises to hold President Obama more accountable after beating Mitt Romney in the general election. Greenwald makes some interesting and valid points, but the lecturing aggressiveness is unbelievably tiring to say the least.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Glenn Greenwald is an exceptional journalist who has done an enormous amount of good on issues pertaining to civil liberties in the US. His work is well substantiated, cogently argued and often powerfully written making his contribution to the national dialogue extremely important. But Greenwald makes himself completely inaccessible to the very people he should be trying to reach if he wants to have real impact, and confines himself to the self congratulating rantosphere alongside fellow ideologues like Jane Hamsher and the rest of the FireDogLake bloggers.

Here’s Greenwald on the progressive media that he argues blindly follows President Obama regardless of the ethical implications:

As for the vow that media progressives will now criticize Obama more and hold him more accountable, permit me to say that I simply do not believe this will happen. This is not because I think those who are taking this vow are being dishonest – they may very well have convinced themselves that they mean it – but because the rationalization they have explicitly adopted and vigorously advocated precludes any change in behavior.

Over the past four years, they have justified their supine, obsequious posture toward the nation’s most powerful political official by appealing to the imperatives of electoral politics: namely, it’s vital to support rather than undermine Obama so as to not help Republicans win elections. Why won’t that same mindset operate now to suppress criticisms of the Democratic leader?

I don’t necessarily find fault with Greewald’s argument here – he is provably right that the mainstream progressive media failed to draw attention to serious civil rights and foreign policy issues leading up to the election, but his relentless hounding of the left wing media and wild generalizations about their aims says more about him than anything else. Greenwald believes that the Left wing media is guilty by omission – they don’t overtly criticize Obama’s foreign policies or civil rights abuses, so therefore they must support them. The logic is completely ridiculous given Greenwald could be found guilty of supporting Republicans using the same line of thinking. Greenwald (very) occasionally writes about Republicans and the right wing media, but spends most of his time attacking the hypocrisy of the Democrats and the left wing media. All well and good. He has the right to do that, and I don’t think the lack of attention he pays to the Republicans means he supports their agenda. But the same goes for left leaning publications and media figures. Just because many of them choose to focus their attentions on the dangers posed by the Republican Party does not mean they explicitly support drone killings or Obama’s policies towards the Palestinians.

Generally speaking, I am supportive of President Obama and have written extensively on why it is crucial he remains in office. I believe the threat posed by the Republican Party is extreme, both from a domestic and foreign policy point of view. I won’t go into detail, but I think there is a strong argument to made that the Democratic Party is the only institution left protecting the country from complete capitulation to corporate interests and the military industrial complex, and must be kept in power in order to preserve what is left of functioning government. That does not mean that I support the President and the Democrats when it comes to their ties to Wall St, his acquiescence to the military chiefs, the use of drones, the signing of the NDAA or the unconditional support of Israel. I don’t specialize in civil rights issues or international law, so don’t spend massive amounts of time writing about them. I have particular interests that I like to cover, and I won’t try to pretend to my readers that I am an expert on issues I haven’t researched thoroughly. This doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions on those issues, I just don’t tend to cover them as much. I do regularly criticize Obama on Israel and the economy, because those are topics are have a particular interest in. That’s my business and I don’t expect everyone to share my interests or take on them.

The problem with Greenwald is that just because he believes Obama’s failings on civil liberties issues and the sorry state of the American media are the most important topics on the planet, everyone else has to agree with him.

Objectively speaking, both mine and Greenwald’s interests are small fry in comparison to environmental issues. Obama’s use of drones and the treatment of Bradley Manning in prison aren’t exactly pressing when compared to the wholesale destruction of vital life sustaining eco systems and the rapid heating of the planet. I’m sure Greenwald cares about these issues, as I do, but probably isn’t as interested in them as he is his own pet topics. And just because we don’t write about them doesn’t mean we don’t feel they are incredibly important.

Personally, I see Greenwald’s excessive ranting against the President and other progressives as counterproductive, not because he’s wrong, but because it gets harder and harder to listen to him.

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Bill Maher explains why Romney lost the election:

Mitt Romney lost because of the Republican brand and Republican policies. There are other reasons, of course, like Mitt being unlovable to anyone not named Ann Romney, but nothing trumps the idea that 2/3rds of America thinks the other 1/3 is a frightening conglomerate of Bible-thumpers, xenophobes, and vaginophobes. (Not a word, but should be.)

Take Mitt’s pivot from being “severely conservative” to being “the white Barack Obama.” Sure, everyone tacks to the middle after the primaries, but Mitt’s performance was different: it was a full-scale repudiation of just about every idea that conservatives hold dear. The positions were changed. The rhetoric was completely different. He was basically Barack Obama, Caucasian Edition.

Now I know what you’re saying: this is what Mitt Romney always does. Being a shape-shifting phony isn’t an act; that’s who he is! And this is true.

But it isn’t who Michele Bachmann is. When it comes to nutty right-wing beliefs that are completely false, she’s a true believer. And yet what was Michele Bachmann saying during the waning days of her too-close-for-comfort campaign? She was putting out an ad distancing herself from her own Party — even her conservative district:

“Michele Bachmann is an independent voice working for us, saying no to big spending by both political parties but bringing them together…”

Then Michele pops on the screen and says, “That’s why I’ve been an independent voice working for you…”

Wow. …I’m just saying. When even Michele Bachmann can’t run as a proud Republican, your brand identification has reached “pink slime” territory.

Maher hits the nail on the head here – the Republicans are going to continue to have a hard time electorally because their party has now divvied off into so many extreme factions, there’s no coherence whatsoever. Romney was always going to have a hard time getting elected given the ideological gymnastics he had to play just to get through the primaries. He had to shore up the crazy Right and disown 99% of his record to become the Republican nominee, then pretend that it never happened in the general election in order to pick up votes from the center. The Democrats simply sat back and ran Romney’s own words against him making their job relatively straightforward (bar Obama’s atrocious first debate performance).

Obama has successfully re-branded the Democratic Party to encompass right wing foreign policy with a center left economic platform, giving it electoral coherence that doesn’t require too much shape shifting when running for office. Agree or disagree with what the Democratic Party now stands for (and in regards to foreign policy, I certainly don’t), it’s definitely working.

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Photo via John Cole at Balloon-Juice.com

By Bob Cesca: There’s been an understandable amount of discussion since Tuesday night about how the Republicans failed and what they can do to improve. I love a good concern-trolling post as much as anyone, especially in the wake of such an exhilarating victory.

Let’s face it, though. Do we sincerely want the Republicans to soften their regional white Christian epistemic self-marginalization?

Ultimately, Republican policies are misogynistic, bigoted, obsolete and ineffectual; their politics are toxic and exploitative; their media presence is a screechy echo-chamber of gibberish and conspiracy theories; and they’re rightly suffering the consequences of this deadly cocktail. If they’d prefer to self-destruct, fine. As such, they should stay away from Nate Silver’s wizardry and stick with Unskewed Polls and Rush Limbaugh’s “gut.” Republican contra-reality politics forced them to attack an empty chair fictional construct instead of the actual president, and it forced them to fabricate policies that simply didn’t exist (Jeep to China, welfare reform gutting, and so on). Great! Keep doing that. It failed. And when Republicans fail, it helps the rest of us.

But even the most sincere recommendations will fall on deaf ears anyway. The things they need to change the most are also threads that unite them. They believe women should be subjugated via anti-choice legislation and they will never abandon their abortion plank. They believe in supply-side, trickle down economics and nearly every sitting Republican politician has signed Grover Norquist’s tax pledge, so softening on tax hikes for the rich is definitely out. They can’t abandon their anti-immigration position or risk losing their angry, white, ignorant base who want nothing more than a return to a monochromatic 1950s Leave it to Beaver utopia — these same conservatives market in horror stories about savage brown people beheading decent law-abiding white people in the deserts of Arizona.

They’re trapped inside their own Mobius Loop of crapola and, honestly, I don’t know exactly how this trend will play out for them. Perhaps a coalition of moderate and liberal Republicans will splinter off, leaving the tea party wackaloons to their masochistic descent into political extinction.

I have no idea, but I certainly won’t be abandoning this topic anytime soon. Stay tuned.

Changing gears, how about some recommendations for liberal Democrats? What could we do as progressives to improve our station and to build our coalition through the second Obama term and beyond?

Two very specific prescriptions here.

1) Get a grip on political reality.

Idealism is healthy and necessary, but not at the expense of grasping political reality. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time writing and speaking about this subject so I won’t elaborate too much. Suffice to say, a shocking number of prominent liberal Democrats have a tough time marrying political reality with policy goals.

Democracy is slow, and politics is a process. While we should actively persuade the president and Congress to adopt more liberal proposals, we can’t expect our favorite senator or the president himself to simply “use the bully pulpit” or, I don’t know, conjure fully passed slate of ready-to-sign bills using nothing more than a shaka and some close-up magic.

We will absolutely achieve more liberal successes if we focus on new ways to exploit the system rather than fighting against it. We can start by building our ranks and convincing voters on the ground, and that involves the next recommendation…

2) Stop badgering people of faith.

Not that I need to justify my personal beliefs in order to discuss this, but for the sake of full disclosure, I’m an ex-Catholic, agnostic bordering on atheist, secular liberal. I’ve spent the bulk of my political career arguing in support of the Establishment Clause and a hearty wall of separation between church and state. I’ve been ensconced in the backlash against the religious right’s campaign to usurp secular laws and replace them with a Leviticus-inspired theocracy. Anyone who engages in the theocratic effort is a political enemy and we should never back down from that fight, especially when human rights for women and the LGBT community are on the line.

Okay, so, all of that aside, liberals/progressives would do well to cut the crap with the smug, self-righteous hectoring of religious people. Categorically labeling all people-of-faith as stupids or childish sky-god fetishists is seriously beginning to sound an awful lot like the sort of overzealous intolerance we’re supposed to be fighting.

How can we possibly scold Republicans about becoming more tolerant while we’re also making blanket pronouncements on Facebook and Twitter that anyone who believes in God is a naive automaton? I doubt many of us would dare to make that same case to Stephen Colbert who’s a practicing Catholic and Sunday school teacher.

So it might be a good idea to holster the anti-religion crusade (har!) and reserve it exclusively for the operatives who are bastardizing faith as a means of sociopolitical oppression. Odds are, they’re conservatives anyway, and a law that mandates, say, transvaginal ultrasounds is evil regardless of whether it’s coming from a religious politician or a secular one. If we target the issues and remain focused on that goal, we’ve fulfilled our policy agenda without taking a broad, thoughtless shotgun approach regardless of who might be caught in the crossfire.

On Tuesday, it turns out that Catholics voted for the president by a margin of 50-48, according to CNN. Among Jews, 69-30, and among “other” religious people, 74-23. Latino Catholics, of which there are many, voted for the president by a margin of 3-to-1. That’s tremendous. Tolerance aside and coming at this from a purely meat-and-potatoes political tack, the liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic Party risks chasing away valuable allies if we’re viewed as the religious-intolerance wing. We should be interested in building and reinforcing our coalition to include those voters rather than poisoning the evolution of the movement by brow-beating them with our too-sophisticated sermons about spaghetti monsters.

If the progressive left opens its doors to people of faith it might discover that there are millions who agree that the wall of separation should remain intact, and millions more who believe in social justice and a liberal, secular form of government.

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By Ted Lieverman: I get uneasy when I see liberals and progressives complaining so vigorously about President Barack Obama’s lack of accomplishments. Sure, the last four years have seen many mistakes and disappointments by the White House. But when I think about the realistic choices in the 2012 election, I remember with embarrassment my own private scandal from many years ago.

Okay, it’s time to come clean. Remember the election of Richard Nixon in 1968? That was my fault.

So there I am, a college sophomore, helping to run a local campaign office in Rockville Centre for Allard Lowenstein, an antiwar Democrat running for Congress in the Fifth District on Long Island. It’s the night before the election, and we are busy finalizing plans to contact voters, offer rides to the polls, respond to election irregularities, and flood our district with flyers.

Four nights before, President Lyndon Johnson had announced a partial halt in U.S. bombing of North Vietnam as a way of jump-starting the peace negotiations in Paris – and helping Vice President Hubert Humphrey win a close race against Republican Richard Nixon.

Lowenstein, who did more than anyone to dissuade Johnson from seeking reelection, who recruited Eugene McCarthy and then Robert Kennedy to run against him, has so far refused to endorse Humphrey. Now, he says in a large meeting of staff and volunteers, the bombing halt and Humphrey’s recent speech in Salt Lake City on the war have convinced him that endorsing Humphrey is necessary. Many of us are dismayed at his decision and, though we continue to work hard for Lowenstein, resolve not to help Humphrey.

As we work on election eve, a union rep comes in and, noting the lack of any campaign materials for Humphrey, starts loading up our front table with flyers, brochures and bumper stickers. We coolly inform him not to leave those materials there, as this office is not supporting Humphrey. Angry and incredulous, he storms out. We pat ourselves on the back for our moral conviction and work through the night to prepare for the big day.

Election Day is hectic, and we’re still at the campaign party at 3 a.m. the day after. Lowenstein has won by a narrow margin, and the vote for President is still too close to call, with Humphrey trailing slightly.

You know the end of the story. Nixon wins, keeps the war going, expands it to Cambodia and Laos, wiretaps his friends as well as his enemies, amasses huge amounts of illegal slush funds, assembles a secret spy team known as the Plumbers, obstructs justice, and ultimately goes down in flames, resigning from office in 1974 while facing near-certain impeachment by the House of Representatives.

And why did Nixon win in 1968? Plenty of reasons, but the most immediate, and the one we had some control over, was the lack of effort by antiwar Democrats and the New Left who saw no important distinction between the candidates.

Maybe that’s true if you take the 30,000-foot view of politics – but almost no one lives their lives at 30,000 feet. They live on the ground, with their hopes and fears as they raise families, seek and keep employment, pay the mortgage, and cope with the outside world. Here on the ground who becomes President means the difference between health and safety regulations being enforced or ignored, between the water becoming more drinkable or more dangerous, between corruption being attacked or encouraged, between quality health care becoming more accessible or further out of reach, between pointless wars being encouraged or avoided.

The 2012 election presents a pretty stark choice. Either you support President Obama and fight for a government responsive to the needs of living human beings, based on the principle of one person, one vote – or you go with Mitt Romney and the Republican vision of one dollar, one vote, where corporations and fetuses are people but women and workers are second-class citizens.

If Romney wins, Wall Street will be invincible and Sesame Street will be toast. Oh … and the Supreme Court? Kiss it goodbye for a generation.

Some lefties talk about the trap of electoral politics, and how voting distracts from the real world of organizing. I’m all in favor of organizing (quick – which candidate used to be a community organizer?), but no one says organizers can’t take 30 minutes one day every two years to vote. Voting is not the denial of popular sovereignty but its affirmation.

This is not about the lesser of two evils. This is a choice between two roads, between moving – however slowly and haltingly – to protect citizens through democratically elected government; or moving further towards de facto government by corporate giants. Your vote, your choice.

But don’t make that stupid, naïve decision that it doesn’t matter. Even though Humphrey took New York by over 350,000 votes, I still feel like I learned the hard way.

Ted Lieverman is a free-lance photographer and former lawyer in Philadelphia.

(Originally published at ConsortiumNews.com)

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Politicians today could learn a thing or two from JFK. In this excellent speech, the 35th President of the United States lays out a forceful defense of government and its positive role in society:

This is what we need to hear from Obama in the next debate. The poll numbers are really not looking good for the President and he needs to come out swinging big time. How does he do that? By appealing to his base and reminding everyone he’s a Democrat, not a centrist like the (again) re-tooled Romney. Instead of having Obama practice zingers, maybe his team should have him sit in front of JFK speeches for a couple of days in preparation for the debate. It may reignite some sorely missing passion.

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By Bob Cesca: Illustrative of his contempt for the truth, Mitt Romney’s campaign website continues to host the following statement: “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.”

On Friday, we discovered yet another reason why this is a super-colossal lie.

With the end of fiscal year 2012, the Congressional Budget Office announced the 2012 federal budget deficit: $1.1 trillion. Taken purely at face value, this number is enormous. Yet every Democrat, and especially the Obama campaign, ought to be telling anyone who will listen: Not only has the president cut the deficit by $312 billion during his first term (so far), but he’s cut the deficit by $200 billion in the past year alone. And the CBO projected that the 2013 Obama budget, if enacted as is, would shrink the deficit to $977 billion — a four year total of nearly $500 billion in deficit reduction.

Okay, yeah, I get it. It’s risky to mention the deficit, but not when you couch it in math and the facts.

As I’ve documented before, the CBO reported in January, 2009 that the federal budget deficit for that fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2008, was already $1.2 trillion. President Obama’s additional ’09 spending added another $200 billion to the deficit, bringing the total to $1.412 trillion. Unprecedented and huge, but given the enormity of the financial crisis and the depth of the recession, there weren’t many other options on the table. Add two wars into the mix and there you go.

But nearly every bill signed by the president has included offsets to make the spending deficit neutral. Why? Because it’s been the law of the land ever since President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February, 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Perhaps during this week’s debate, Vice President Biden could ask Rep. Paul Ryan who voted against the bill. Mitt Romney should also be asked about it.

Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Market Watch.

Once again, Mitt Romney’s website still contains the words: “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” Pants on fire times a thousand. Fact: the president’s record is exactly the opposite of what Romney says. And how long ago was this statistic released by the Wall Street Journal and subsequently affirmed by fact checkers? Five months ago. On September 26, when asked about his record of mendacious claims, Mitt Romney told CNN’s Jim Acosta, “We’ve been absolutely spot on. And any time there’s been anything that’s been amiss, we correct it or remove it.” Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Romney, you missed a whopper.

Another whopper: during Romney’s “winning” debate against the president last week, he claimed, “The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it.” Another lie. Yes, the president said he’d cut the deficit in half — but he absolutely did not double it. As I’ve outlined here, he’s cut the deficit by 22 percent so far — 35 percent by the end of 2013.

Furthermore, I can name two Democratic presidents who’ve cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? No. Saint Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. By the way, conservatives, don’t give me the line about Democratic-controlled congresses “controlling the purse strings.” Any six-year-old child who’s watched a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon knows the president signs all legislation before it becomes law. The House can’t magically spend money without a presidential signature. Besides, if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit — and the Republicans have been merciless on the president in this area in spite of reality and their own party’s record — it’s only fair that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced.

Yet without objections the Romney campaign and the Republicans continue to champion their status as “fiscal hawks” even though the facts prove that to correlate “fiscal responsibility” and “Republican Party” is absurd on its face. There’s nothing — absolutely nothing — about the Romney plan that’s any different from every Republican presidential plan in recent history, but we’re supposed to believe that Romney will cut the deficit? In fact, as we all know by now, Romney is proposing $5 trillion in un-funded tax cuts, as well as massive increases in military spending, and, if Romney wins, you can bet the Republicans will drop their deficit and debt talk into the next nearest memory hole to be forgotten until another Democrat enters the White House.

If the Obama campaign and the Democrats can talk about the deficit in these terms, it undercuts one of the leading Republican attacks and becomes a significant winning issue for the president. With four weeks left, it’s time to dive in head first.

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Mitt Romney should avoid jokes about airplane technology.

In case you missed it here’s what we covered at The Daily Banter this week: Ben broke some news with a pair of exclusives. First, could Karl Rove steal this election, and did he steal the 2004 election, too? And Mitt Romney could, in fact, be a billionaire. We also followed the continuing trainwreck that is the Mitt Romney campaign. Ben Cohen broke down the real impact of Mitt Romney’s “47 Percent” video, I documented the widening poll numbers showing the president building a sizable lead and Oliver Willis discussed the various ways the right and left cope with losing. And finally, I began the week with an essay covering the evolution of party platforms and ideologies from 1860 to present day.

Cheers and have a great weekend!

Bob Cesca,
Interim Editor

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