Nate Silver’s latest projections if the election was held today (blue is Obama, red, Romney):

We’ve still got the debates to come, the economy could go into free fall, and Obama could make a catastrophic error, but it seems highly unlikely Romney will be able to pull back from numbers as definitive as these, particularly given the disasters Romney has managed to embroil himself in and the complete state of disarray his campaign is in.

There’s a key difference between missteps made by Obama, and missteps made by all of his opponents over the past four years: Obama owns his mistakes and uses them to his advantage. Remember the Rev. Wright debacle? Obama took the heat, gave a compelling speech about race in America and never tried to hide from the backlash. Sure it hurt him in the short term, but the overriding impression was that Obama was in command of his campaign, and it probably helped in the long term. Obama has been able to handle crisis after crisis and come out looking good, whereas his opponents have tied themselves into knots when mistakes are made or attacks go wrong. John McCain knew he had a very serious problem after it transpired Sarah Palin was woefully unprepared for the Oval Office, but was powerless to do anything about it. He never acknowledged a mistake and it made him seem out of touch and out of control. It’s pretty safe to say Obama never would have allowed himself to get into that position, and if he had, he’d have owned the problem and turned it to his advantage.

Romney is finding out that running a business and running for office are two very different things. While he believes his rise to supremacy in the corporate world entitles him to the Presidency (he told voters about his Midas touch:”My own view is that if we win on November 6th, 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”), Romney is now beginning to experience the reality that Presidential politics requires a completely different skill set. And it’s pretty clear Romney doesn’t have many of them.

Romney essentially bought his way to the Republican nomination, and he found that pretty tough despite the awful level of opposition. Now he’s in the big leagues against a candidate with experience and an array of attributes he could only dream of. So far as we can tell, the experience is not going to be a good one for Romney. He’s finding out that being white and rich isn’t enough, and sadly for him, he hasn’t got anything else going for him.

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by Ari Rutenberg

Editor’s Note: Ben Cohen is on vacation for a few days, so I’ll been posting in his stead.  If there are any topics of particular interest to readers that have not been covered, please let me know and I’ll do my best to get something going.  Also I love conversation and discussion, so please comment and engage!

Over the past few days, there have been two instances of what I would call accidental honesty on the part of the GOP.  The first was Todd Akin’s comment that women who have been legitimately raped rarely get pregnant (on which you can read more here from the great Oliver Willis).  The second is Ohio elections official Doug Priesse’s statement that “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine” (more here from the Columbus Dispatch). Every politically active person in this country is aware that many on the right agree with Messrs. Akin and Priesse, even if the GOP won’t always come out so forthrightly a state these positions.

Aside from my fundamental disagreement, and no small amount of disgust at such blatantly discriminatory statements, what really bothers me about this is the media’s reaction to it, and to any other event where they are actually given the information they ask for.

For months, the media (in this case the MSM and left-wing press) have been talking about the awful voter discrimination that is taking place in states like Florida and Ohio.  They have been very accurately pointing out that its because many GOP voters and pols feel that  black people and other minorities are likely to commit voter fraud, despite the complete lack of evidence to support such statements.  Yet when these statements actually come out, rather that reacting seriously the media feigns surprise and starts freaking out.

Kind of like Romney’s tax return.  We all know that he’s paid very little taxes.  Whether its 5%, 3%, or 0% I don’t care, and I don’t think most voters really care.  Yet if he were actually to release the rest of them, rather than taking it as an opportunity to seriously examine the iniquity and insanity of our tax code (like why is income above $110,100 exempt from payroll taxes?), the media would spend a month going “holy shit Mitt Romney hasn’t paid any income taxes”, despite the fact that we all already know that and have already been discussing it for a year or more.

I’m really sick of stupid media game because none of it contributes to solving these problems.  Even from journalists I generally agree with.  I want to see a serious discussion of these issues.  Yes its a problem that Romney has been such a stingy bastard, but the problem is that the system allows him to do so.  In the same way, yes its an issue that the minor schmuck in Ohio doesn’t want to let black people have extended voting hours, but the real problem is that the GOP has a real problem with equal protection of the law when it come to people who disagree with them, and minorities in general.  Its not just voting law, and we need to have a serious discussion about why Republican’s don’t think equal protection means equal protection.

What do they think it means, and how can we educate them on sectors of the population they don’t understand and thus don’t trust?  Rather than just saying “ha! see you guys really are racist, sexist assholes” (which is true but irrelevant), we need to engage them and figure out how we’re going to live together.  If the great experiment that we all call home is to survive and flourish, we need to try engaging, discussing, learning, and educating rather than waiting for accidentally honest gotcha moments and shallow factual victories to give the MSM an excuse to feign shock and horror at things they already know to be true.

What do you think?

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Mother Jones reports on the GOP's terrifying scheme to snatch the Presidency in 2012 by implementing new rules in the electoral system. The basic premise: 

Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes—one for each of the state's two senators—would go to the statewide winner.)

This could cost Obama dearly. The GOP controls both houses of the state Legislature plus the governor's mansion—the so-called "redistricting trifecta"—in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state's congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats.

The most worrying aspect of this new strategy is that it doesn't seem like there is much the Democrats can do about it legally. The report is well worth reading in full – hopefully enough people will read it and figure out a way to stop this madness.

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by Chalan Moon

Political ideology panders to the imagination very much like pundits persuade the intellectually meek and corruptible. I imagine the efforts of a candidate. He or she boldly delivers unabashed honesty and everyone recognizes it as such. My vote is clear and crisp. It is a mountainous lake in the summer and I dive into its refreshing body to immerse myself in certainty. The waters and my choice are clear. People stand up and voice their political outrage frighteningly loud, only here they are heard. Their chorus reverberates in my chest and gives me resolution.

But this is not our reality in America. It is the true ideology of democracy: the governmental process we long for and will never have.

(more…)

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