"A generation of Democrats lost in the Obama era..."

At Hot Air, Noah Rothman demonstrates a lack of understanding of the long game vs. the short game, and the difference between transient change and structural change.

When Barack Obama took office, he was hailed as a liberal savior. His presidency, it was believed, would usher in a new era of progressive dominance not seen since Roosevelt. Instead, Republicans have been restored to a position of power across the country they had not known since Al Smith lost 40 states to Herbert Hoover. Far from revitalizing it, Obama has erased generations of the Democratic Party’s progress.

Wow, is that ever short-sighted. Obama instituted the greatest leap forward in Progressive politics since Social Security. Electoral control of the branches of government tends to be cyclical and temporary - massive government entitlement programs are forever. Did the Democrats lose some temporary political power as a result? Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs...

Seriously, his administration has been a complete and utter disaster for America, and the fact that the Republicans will control Congress for the next two years, and have a lot more state-level representation than they did six years ago, does not change that.

Obama Breaks the Health Law to Save It

How many times will this administration break the law before people start thinking in terms of "high crimes and misdemeanors"?

This is not the first time the administration has suggested that it's going to go against the plain text of the law, either. Why is the administration taking such a careless attitude toward a law it spent a year crafting?

It’s hard to come up with a reason that bodes well. Lawsuits seem inevitable, and unwinnable. At best, the White House is buying some time to try to get things up and working; at worst, it hasn't even thought that far ahead.

The Obama Presidency - the shorter version

This is a great point from Ace of Spades HQ (wrapped in yet another [longer] Obamacare failure post)...

A government's institutional character is set by the President. The government largely adopts his personality -- and his pathologies.

In Obama's case, this means a predilection for secrecy, contempt for the normal processes of democratic government, a refusal to acknowledge "bad news," and a strong preference for lies over truth.

What a difference a couple of months makes...

Remember back, in the far distant past, in the murky mists of time - September, 2013 - when the Republicans were excoriated, pilloried and condemned for suggesting a one-year delay in the enforcement of the (hilariously-named) "Affordable Care Act"? How they were deemed to be "economic terrorists"?

Yeah, well, look who's an "economic terrorist" now...

White House to Allow Insurers to Continue Canceled Health Plans

The White House on Thursday will announce a plan for allowing insurance companies to continue offering existing individual insurance policies even if they fall short of the coverage standards set by the 2010 health-care law, a Democratic official briefed on the plan said.

And again, as he did with the employer mandate, the President, charged with enforcing the law of the land, is going to unilaterally, by fiat (and therefore, both illegally and unconstitutionally) change that which, as we've been continually informed by its supporters, is the "settled law of the land."

One would think that those who promoted this disaster might apologize, or at least cut back on the moralistic hectoring about the virtues of this great plan, but I expect no such happy result any time soon...

Congressman-D - I won't say he lied, but it clearly wasn't true...

So, one of the things that's fun to watch right now is Democratic elected officials playing "choose a euphemism for lying" in order to discuss the President's patently untrue Obamacare sales pitch.

I think the president was grossly misleading to the American public. I know right away as a veterinarian, I have my own business, that my policies got cancelled even before the Affordable Care Act. I know that I would change policies on a regular basis, trying to find the best deal for myself and my employees. But a lot of Americans, a lot of Oregonians, have stayed with the same policy for a number of years and are shocked that their policy got cancelled.

- Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Oregon

No, Congressman - the President lied. Period.

Of course, as it was obviously a lie right from the start, the only people who were "misled" were people who believed him. Everyone was lied to; only about half were "misled."

What was obviously a lie turns out to have been ... a lie

As even the mainstream press seems to be coming to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, the President oversold the "Affordable Care Act," I look back to what I wrote about it four years ago.

So they can put together a bill that's going to a) add 15 (or 30 or 47, depending on the President's mood, apparently) million people to the insurance rolls b) while providing improved care c) at lower cost for everyone d) and allowing everyone to keep the coverage they've already got if they want to e) and not increasing the budget deficit f) or increasing taxes¹, but they can't post that freakin' bill on the internet?...

It boggles my mind that anyone can watch any part of this process and think, "yes, this is how we're going to make the health care system better for everyone! What could possibly go wrong?"


¹ - Every time I write that out, I vacillate between giggling and rage. I giggle that the preposterousness of the suggestion, that there's somehow, some way that increased government intervention is going to lead to any one of those things happening, never mind all six simultaneously, and rage that the President of the United States actually thinks that the US citizens are stupid enough to buy it. He doesn't even have enough respect for the people of this country to try a plausible argument.

Health insurance cancellation notices soar above Obamacare enrollment rates

Katie McHugh, The Daily Caller:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans do not meet Obamacare’s requirements.

The number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.

What was that line, again?

Oh, yeah...

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

- Candidate Barack Obama

I'd feel abused and lied to if I'd ever believed it. Since what he was saying wasn't possible, there was never any reason for anyone to have believed it. Sadly, many did...

"Deliberately sabotaging America's economy..."

What was that line that Mr. Kristof used?   About politicians threatening default, using a "potential catastrophe as a source of bargaining power in a game of extortion: We don’t want anything to happen to this fine American economy as we approach the debt limit, so you’d better meet our demand." That whole column, of course, was a plea for us to understand that this kind of tactic (known to normal people as "negotiation") is some beyond-the-pale behavior indulged in by Republicans and Republicans only.  Democrats would never play games with the debt limit.

So, here's a Senatorial example of "play[ing] politics with the debt limit":

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem.  The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure...

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here." Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.  I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

Which Senator was that who was "engaged in deliberately sabotaging America’s economy and damaging our national security"?

Senator Barack Obama, 3/16/2006.  He was arguing against raising the debt limit, and he was joined in voting against that raise of the limit by every single Democratic Senator.

At least we've got John Kerry on our side...

This sounds like it should be from The Onion, but it's actually from The Globe and Mail. (Obviously, that doesn't make it true, but...)

“We’re not going to war,” Mr. Kerry told reporters Monday after meeting with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in London. “We will be able to hold [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort, in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing; an unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”

Of course, an "unbelievably small, limited kind of effort" is almost certain to produce an "unbelievably small, limited kind of result." Any results that aren't "unbelievably small [and] limited" are almost certainly going to be unintended results, and probably negative.

There's also this classic:

“The end of the conflict requires a political solution,” he said. “There is no military solution and we have no illusions about that.”

We know that there's "no military solution," so the obvious next step is an "unbelievably small, limited" military action, because "unbelievably small" military gestures are how we always get to political solutions.

Obviously, if you're going to pick John Kerry to be Secretary of State, you aren't going to do a good job managing foreign affairs. The next time John Kerry is right about anything will be the first. But this seems spectacularly wrong-headed, even for Kerry. "Yeah, we're going to attack, because we said we would, but we aren't actually going to do any damage because it will be a small attack, so it's just empty symbolism to show Assad that we're capable of empty symbolism, because otherwise, the President who drew that red line in the sand will look like a feckless idiot, rather than a strong leader, because nothing says strong leadership like telling people beforehand that your attack won't do anything useful."



It's hard to believe that this isn't selling well in the heartland, or even on Capitol Hill...

In which Barack Obama makes a comment which which I agree. At least in part...

According to a report in The Hill of an Obama campaign appearance...

"We’ve got a politics that's stuck right now. And the reason it’s stuck is because people spend more time thinking about the next election," [LB:  said the campaigning President] "than they do thinking about the next generation," [LB: already saddled with a mountain of debt to which this President's policies have greatly contributed.]

The Day After

This is the thought that keeps running through my mind - if this incumbent, with this record, running this campaign, can beat this challenger, what is America in 2012?  And what hope is there for ever returning to a society of individual rights and strong economic growth?

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces...

- Abraham Lincoln

But that seems to be what we've come to.  I keep thinking about the arguments of the slave-holders, that their system was in fact a kindness, more humane than the free labor system of the north, because their slaves had free food and housing and social security.

I went to bed last night, long before it was all called, because it started trending badly early, and I knew that I needed to get some sleep, and I wouldn't otherwise.  Slept until about four, woke to the depressing, but at that point not unexpected, news that we have four more years of Barack Obama to look forward to. I haven't read the returns, don't know what happened, or where, and frankly, don't much care.  I know that Scott Brown lost.  I know that rugged individualist "Live Free Or Die" New Hampshire has given up the ghost and become MA north politically.

Horrified by what's happened the last four years.  Terrified by what's to come in the next four.

One of the things that's coming soon, has probably already started, is the recriminations from those who didn't support Romney in the primary against those who did.  Let me just say this - the idea that another one of those candidates, be it Gingrich or Santorum or Perry or whoever, would have run a better campaign, or come closer to winning, strikes me as extremely far-fetched.

And this is not time for recriminations, because this is not a campaign failure or a candidate failure.  This is a system failure, and we need to figure out how to fix it.  Things are going to get worse before they get better, but if just letting them get worse until everyone sees how bad they are is the cure to the political problems, we're never going to get them fixed.

Election day

A couple of thoughts as we head to the polls...

• If the electorate is as Democratic as it was in 2008, Barack Obama will win a second term.  Many of the polls are suggesting that that will be the case.
• I can't believe it.
• Either way, I'm more than ready for it to be over.
• We really have two different electorates in this country, with very different assumptions and expectations.  Someone is going to be not only disappointed, but shocked tomorrow morning.  Certainly, there are many on the right who have looked at all of the data and really believe that Romney will win.  And I get the impression that many of Obama's supporters have not even considered that possibility.
• The polls cannot all be right.  Maybe none of them are.  But for the past month, or more, they've been telling two different stories.  With the topline results, they've been saying that it's a very tight race, with Romney possibly slightly ahead in the popular vote and Obama clearly ahead in the electoral college vote.  But the internals have suggested that Romney has a huge lead with independent voters.  Those two stories are only reconcilable if there is a massive majority of people voting who claim to be Democrats, a bigger Democrat majority than we actually saw in 2008.  Given what's happened since then, how likely is that?  Well, it's obviously preposterous.  
• And, as much as I hate - hate! - to be in the position of arguing that the polls are wrong (I'd much rather my candidate had a big lead than to be arguing that the polls are wrong, which feels like sophistry and rationalization [and the next time I engage in either of those won't be the first]), there's another part of it.  The response rate on political polls is actually down to 9%.  That is, for every 100 houses or phone numbers that a pollster chooses as part of its sample, it ends up with just 9 valid responses.  Even if they are doing a perfect job of choosing their initial dataset, there's just no way of knowing how representative of the actual electorate the final response set is.  They've got all kinds of techniques and data to weight the results, but all of the results rest on assumptions that may or may not be true.  Are there some kinds of voters who are more likely to be missed?  Are the 6% that the pollsters reach that won't answer the questions more likely to support one candidate than the other?
• There's a possibility that Obama's Sandy-related photo-ops actually changed the trajectory of this campaign.  In which case, his re-election would qualify as an act of God, because there's nothing he could have done to change it on his own.
• My emotional investment is more than adequate evidence for me that the Federal Government is far too big and obtrusive. If the Federal Government were kept within its Constitutional boundaries, the average citizen should have little to no contact with it from year to year.  Instead, it is a constant, overwhelming presence, influencing all that we see and do.

I've been hesitant to make a prediction.  Yes, I've been telling people for months that I expected Romney to win an election that ended up being not particularly close.  But I'm so emotionally invested that it's difficult for me to tell where the analysis ends and the wishful thinking begins. 

But here it is anyway...

Romney wins the popular vote 51-48.  And the electoral college vote 315-223.

Romney states that are likeliest to be lost if Obama wins:  OH, PA, WI, IA
Obama states that are likeliest to be won if there's a Romney landslide:  MI, MN, NV, OR

Predictable History, Unpredictable Past

This Associated Press story suggests that the campaign is Too Close To Call

As the 2012 presidential campaign moves to a close, national polls say the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is too close to call.

Romney's big lead over Obama from last summer is gone as the hard-fought battle has tightened over the past three months, following the pattern of presidential contests in years gone by.

As more and more Americans focus on the decision of which level ro pull tomorrow, the polls also say Obama's hopes may be damaged because many of those who support him may not vote.

The original watershed mark for the final round of polls was the nationally televised debate between Romney and Obama last month. But late-breaking developments regarding the Americans killed in Libya, or the Americans without power and heat due to Hurricane Sandy could make recent poll results quickly obsolete.
...
While the polls seem to have different results, in fact, the differences are all smaller than the error margins to which all polls are subject. This means that the polls cannot be said to put either man in the solid position as the frontrunner.

In addition, the close race spotlights the unique system of picking a president - the election is decided by who wins the most electoral votes, which are awarded sate-by-state. It is possible in a close race that a candidate could win the most populate votes nationwide and still lose the electoral vote to his or her opponent.

Of course, every election is decided by who actually goes to vote. But the polls this year demonstrate that the issue of turnout is ever more critical than ever. For example, among registered voters, the Pew Research poll put the race at Obama 49% and Romney 42%. But when the results were weighted to reflect possible turnout, their results were Romney 47% and Obama 50%.

Ok, that's not exactly what it said. To see exactly what it said, you need to replace 2012 with 1980, Obama with Carter, and Romney with Reagan. It wasn't published today - it was published on the day before the 1980 election. The day before Ronald Reagan won 50.7% of the vote vs. Jimmy Carter's 41% (John Anderson took 10%). The day before Reagan won 489 electoral votes.

Too close to call...

"Obama unworthy commander-in-chief"

I think it's fair to say that the editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal have left no room for misinterpretation in their endorsement of Mitt Romney. More specifically, in their passionate endorsement of the end of the Presidency of Barack Obama.

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." He added, "Under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama's future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" - $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he's in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he's powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.

Candidate Obama said if he couldn't fix the economy in four years, his would be a one-term presidency.

Mitt Romney is moral, capable and responsible man. Just this once, it's time to hold Barack Obama to his word. Maybe we can all do something about that, come Tuesday.

I can't honestly say that I've never seen anything like that, because that's not an uncommon level of vitriol for internet commentary. But it's quite something to see from a major newspaper.

I don't disagree with a word of it, of course...

Secretary Of Business

Another effective ad from Team Romney...

Peggy Noonan - wrong again...

The October 3 debate in Denver, between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, was the seminal moment of this campaign. And Peggy Noonan, in her analysis, gets what happened there exactly backwards.

Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. Americans had gotten used to him as The President. Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune.

What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn't afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.

But that's what he did.

What happened in Denver had nothing to do with Barack Obama. It was never going to be - he's been the President for four years, with all of his speeches and actions, and their consequences. People's feelings about Obama and the job he's done are essentially set, not to be significantly changed by one more 90 minute television appearance. No, the debate was all about Mitt Romney.

The Obama campaign, recognizing that things are not going well, has spent the last year attempting to define Mitt Romney in such a way as to render him unacceptable to the majority of voters. The impact of Denver did not come from Obama's behavior, but from Romney's. In one night, he destroyed the caricature that the Obama campaign had spent a year building.

The threat to Obama's re-election was never the President's behavior. It was always the bad economy and an acceptable alternative. Mitt Romney's performance in Denver told the American people that there was not only an acceptable alternative, but one who knew how to deal with the bad economy. Obama's behavior - "petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself" - didn't really show until the next two debates. And it's behavior that he's been demonstrating for his entire time on the public stage. The difference in Denver was that there was a contrast for everyone to see.

"The President Sends His Non-Regrets "

The Wall Street Journal, on the excuse-making, pass-the-buck President...

As Mr. Obama likes to remind voters now, in 2009 the economy had suffered a financial heart attack and needed to be nurtured back to health. That required careful management and attention to reviving consumer and business confidence.

Yet rather than work with both parties to fashion a growth agenda, he went all-in for a Keynesian spending blowout and subcontracted the details to House Democrats. And rather than wait to see how strongly—and even whether—the economy then recovered, he dove headlong into fighting to pass 40 years of pent-up liberal social policy.

It wasn't merely ObamaCare. The President also tried to impose a cap-and-tax on carbon energy production, end secret ballots for unions via card check, while promising to raise taxes in 2011 until he was stopped when voters elected a GOP House in 2010.

Some editor obviously screwed up...

It's trite and cliche to suggest that the press in this country favors the Democrats over the Republicans by a wide margin. Trite and cliche and true. And one of the ways in which that favoritism sometimes shows itself is through the art of juxtaposition - two superficially similar images side by side, with the Democrat beaming and the Republican scowling.

Years of that make this morning's edition of The Des Moines Register frankly shocking.

You can't buy that kind of publicity...

"Lies, scandal and politics: Benghazi"

Remember that classic statement of high moral indignation from the President during the second debate? About how outrageous it would be for anyone to suggest that he, or anyone else in his administration, might even consider the possibility of misleading the American people about terrorist attacks for the purpose of political gain?

Yeah. Right.

Danielle Pletka:

Luckily, Reuters now tells us what really happened before the President hit the Rose Garden on 9/12: Within minutes of the attack the day before, the White House received three emails. Here are the three subject lines for those emails, which spanned a couple of hours from the beginning of the terrorists’ move:

Email one: ”U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU,” meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
Email two: “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi”
Email three: ”Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

Bottom line? Barack Obama was willfully and knowingly lying to the American people. Why? To protect the meme that he had al Qaeda and affiliates/sympathizers like Libya’s Ansar al Sharia on the run.

New Obama defense - "He's not lying - he just doesn't understand the budget..."

Among the items that the President lied about during Monday nights debate was the source of the sequestration component of the last budget deal, which is going to result in across the board budget cuts if there's not a new budget deal. But apparently, he's got defenders willing to argue that he really wasn't lying. About sequestration, anyway...

Bob Woodward:

“What the president said is not correct,” Woodward told POLITICO Tuesday. “He’s mistaken. And it’s refuted by the people who work for him.”

...

During the debate, however, Obama said the idea originated on Capitol Hill.

“First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed,” Obama said, adding his strongest pronouncement to date on its future: “It will not happen.”

Woodward said there’s a possibility the president was unaware of how the idea came about.

“It’s a complicated process — and in fairness to the president — maybe he didn’t know that they were doing this because it’s kind of technical budget jargon,” Woodward said.

Well, that's a hell of a slogan for the campaign. "Four more years! He didn't screw up the budget intentionally, he just didn't know what he was doing!"

Of course, not knowing what he's doing, economically speaking, is a far more generous assessment of his term than the alternative...