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PoliGAF 2012 |OT3| If it's not a legitimate OT the mods have ways to shut it down

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T

Trurl

Banned
One reason I think that Ryan is f'd in the debate with Biden is that he now deals with a more restrictive media narrative. Biden's narrative is that he is prone to embarrassing gaffes. For the most part these gaffes are harmless and they are something he should try to avoid anyway. Ryan however is now seen as a liar and will have the veracity of his claims checked and held to standards that he is not used to. His arsenal of bs will do him far less good in the debates than it has done him in the past.
 
Z

Zabka

Member
talisayNon said:
You should have seen this dude at the Jets rally.

Was on for two seconds before getting booed so hard he couldn't get two sentences out. Hilarious.

There's no appeal, and he can't run on his record. I can't believe how shitty Jersey's economy has been. I mean, I don't really blame him, but it doesn't look good either.
Click to expand...

You can blame him for turning down federal money to create the largest public transit project in the country.

RDreamer said:
Biden to press: Fact Check me

Press to Biden:

Ok, so Ryan and Romney run around all willy nilly talking about Medicare going bankrupt, and practically the entire Ryan budget is based on entitlement reform because OMGS we can't afford it and they're going bankrupt, but now they decide to go with the fact checking? When a democrat makes it more solvent because of all that shit, suddenly it was always fucking solvent? bah...
Click to expand...
I love that it's labeled false because congress could throw more money at it to prevent it from going bankrupt. Speculative bullshit like that is the exact thing "fact checkers" shouldn't be doing.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Y2Kev said:
I have to hope Chris Christie isn't going anywhere nationally. He's such an embarrassing person and politician; I couldn't imagine voters ok with him representing them internationally. Or maybe that's the appeal.

Even my GOP-loving coworker in the office next to me calls him a thug. He even has had multiple incidents where he gets into shouting matches on the fucking boardwalk in NJ. The footage literally looks like an episode of Jersey Shore.

Maybe that's the appeal?
Click to expand...

They used to see him as a fighter, someone who would fight for them, who wouldn't sugar coat their problems. Of course the things that made them think that are the same qualities that make him a thug, except he didn't seem as extreme at the time. You can't go a month without him making the news in a bad way.
 
Q

Qazaq

Banned
I have a question:

How exactly is Romney going to win Ohio and Virginia?


I just don't understand it there. He's almost never led any kind of serious Ohio or Virginia poll.

Look at Virginia:

RCP Average 8/13 - 8/23 -- -- 47.3 46.7 Obama +0.6
Rasmussen Reports 8/23 - 8/23 500 LV 4.5 47 47 Tie
PPP (D) 8/16 - 8/19 855 LV 3.4 50 45 Obama +5
Purple Strategies 8/13 - 8/14 600 LV 4.0 45 48 Romney +3
Rasmussen Reports 8/7 - 8/7 500 LV 4.5 48 46 Obama +2
CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac 7/31 - 8/6 1412 LV 3.0 49 45 Obama +4
Rasmussen Reports 7/16 - 7/17 500 LV 4.5 47 46 Obama +1
Quinnipiac 7/10 - 7/16 1673 RV 2.4 44 44 Tie
Purple Strategies 7/9 - 7/13 600 LV 4.0 46 44 Obama +2
PPP (D) 7/5 - 7/8 647 RV 3.9 50 42 Obama +8
WeAskAmerica 6/25 - 6/25 1106 LV 3.0 43 48 Romney +5
Rasmussen Reports 6/3 - 6/3 500 LV 4.5 47 47 Tie
Purple Strategies 5/31 - 6/5 600 LV 4.0 49 46 Obama +3
Quinnipiac 5/30 - 6/4 1282 RV 2.7 47 42 Obama +5
Virginian-Pilot/ODU 5/16 - 6/15 776 RV 3.5 49 42 Obama +7
NBC News/Marist 5/17 - 5/20 1076 RV 3.0 48 44 Obama +4
Washington Post 4/28 - 5/2 964 RV 4.0 51 44 Obama +7
PPP (D) 4/26 - 4/29 680 RV 3.8 51 43 Obama +8

The only polls to ever show him leading have been two with noted Republican house effects; We Ask America is an (R) pollster.

This is just not the kind of performance that suggests Romney is going to win it.

It just feels like Virginia's a big ol' firewall. I feel like it's even more sure than Wisconsin.
 
Q

Qazaq

Banned
Exactly.


With Florida, it doesn't feel like that. Obama may be leading, but you can imagine Romney winning there if he improves a bit nationally.

But if the 2012 electorate looks ANYTHING like it did in 2008, I just don't see how Romney can win Virginia. At all.
 
E

Effect

Member
The thing about Virginia is the Constitution party candidate. I think that's the party he belongs to. He pulls votes from Romney. If he's allowed to stay on the ballot Romney certainly loses since it's said he can pull close to 10% of the vote since he's a well known figure there. Now if republicans in the end have him removed (since the head of elections there is on the Romney campaign I think) I could see that hurting him as well as that could cause a backlash against Romney.

Edit: Beaten.
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
Zabka said:
I love that it's labeled false because congress could throw more money at it to prevent it from going bankrupt. Speculative bullshit like that is the exact thing "fact checkers" shouldn't be doing.
Click to expand...
I think it's a reasonable judgment call.

It's hard to fact check. If you go too far towards the lawyerly end of things, judging whether claims are "technically" true or false, you allow a lot of extremely misleading claims to go through and you bar a lot of basically true oversimplifications. A fact checker's job really isn't to say whether or not politicians are lying; it's to say whether or not they're being dishonest.

And "bankrupt by 2016" really is pretty misleading. In the same way that people around here don't see Social Security going into deficit as the end of the world, it doesn't mean much that these Medicare expenses would have to be paid out of general funds. Nobody thinks that Romney/Ryan are actually going to drastically scale back benefits while they're in office - they won't screw current seniors that hard in the run-up to 2016. And it's hardly speculative bullshit when Congress does this sort of thing all the time. It's like panicking over the debt ceiling being reached when everybody knows that Congress is just going to raise it (perhaps we can't take that for granted anymore when Republicans have veto power in the Senate, but still). It is the job of an unbiased media to point that kind of thing out.

Edit: The flip side is that the media needs to be all over Romney/Ryan claims about being responsible and pointing out that Medicare is another one of the areas in which they're going to increase deficit spending.

Maybe there's a case to be made that the official rating for a statement like this should be "yes, but", but it's definitely misleading and that should be emphasized.
 
O

Officerrob

Banned
Those polls also don't have Virgil Goode on the ballot. If Goode isn't kicked off the ballot, Romney has no chance of winning Virginia

Edit:Beaten twice, damn
 
C

Cloudy

Banned
Effect said:
The thing about Virginia is the Constitution party candidate. I think that's the party he belongs to. He pulls votes from Romney. If he's allowed to stay on the ballot Romney certainly loses since it's said he can pull close to 10% of the vote since he's a well known figure there. Now if republicans in the end have him removed (since the heal of elections there is on the Romney campaign I think) I could see that hurting him as well as that could cause a backlash against Romney.

Edit: Beaten.
Click to expand...

How can they remove him if he has the signatures? It's one thing to suppress the vote using restrictive voter ID laws but dumping candidates off the ballot would be a huge PR nightmare...
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Crazy thought: if this really does turn out to be a triple-digit EV win for Obama, I wonder what that will do to the Pelosi/Reid legacy?

To follow up with an earlier post, yes, Kerry's speech was pretty much his coming out party for Secretary of State. And good for him.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Kerry isn't a shoe-in for SoS. His goals of ushering through a major piece of legislation, such as the failed energy and Law of the Sea bills,, were disasters (to be fair, they weren't his fault) and Obama might have someone else in mind. He has been quite an effective and loyal surrogate to Obama, but I have a feeling Obama would appoint Susan Rice over him.
 
J

Jackson50

Member
Hitokage said:
Is there any chance for filibuster reform next year?
Click to expand...
Reid's promised reform if Obama's reelected and Democrats retain control of the Senate. I remain highly skeptical. But if progressives maintain pressure, and the heightened expectations are only going to encourage them, they might actually deliver. It would help immensely if Democrats flipped control of the House.
PhoenixDark said:
Kerry isn't a shoe-in for SoS. His goals of ushering through a major piece of legislation, such as the failed energy and Law of the Sea bills,, were disasters (to be fair, they weren't his fault) and Obama might have someone else in mind. He has been quite an effective and loyal surrogate to Obama, but I have a feeling Obama would appoint Susan Rice over him.
Click to expand...
Kerry did not expect the Law of the Sea treaty to pass. Securing 67 votes, especially during an election year, is impossible with the present Senate. But it's transparent he's angling for the helm of Foggy Bottom.
 
I

isoquant

Member
An interesting article from WaPo:

Boehner said he believed that he and the others — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — had a plan. He told Obama: We think we can work this out. Give us a little more time. We’ll come back to you. We are not going to negotiate this with you.

Obama objected, saying that he couldn’t be left out of the process. “I’ve got to sign this bill,” he reminded the leaders as they sat in the Cabinet Room off the Oval Office.

“Mr. President,” Boehner challenged, “as I read the Constitution, the Congress writes the laws. You get to decide if you want to sign them.”

Reid, the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill, spoke up. The congressional leaders want to speak privately, he said. Give us some time.

This was it. Congress was taking over. The leaders were asking the president to leave the meeting he had called in the White House.
Click to expand...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...63793c-f6db-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

Obama comes off as quite weak, a little bit out of his depth.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Jackson50 said:
.Kerry did not expect the Law of the Sea treaty to pass. Securing 67 votes, especially during an election year, is impossible with the present Senate. But it's transparent he's angling for the helm of Foggy Bottom.
Click to expand...

True, yet I was still surprised at the general lack of support (in the senate)

Interesting article on what might happen if Kerry's seat were to become open
http://www.wbur.org/2012/07/23/john-kerry-secretary-of-state

I would laugh so hard if Joseph Kennedy III, after winning Frank's congress seat last week, turned around and ran for the senate seat; it would be the most entertainingly blatant move of ambition in recent history. I really doubt it'll happen.

Mike Capuano seems like a good choice to replace Kerry
 
C

Cloudy

Banned
isoquant said:
An interesting article from WaPo:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...63793c-f6db-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

Obama comes off as quite weak, a little bit out of his depth.
Click to expand...

I read the whole thing. He comes off as smart (for once in dealing with those clowns) to me. If he didn't hold firm those GOP assholes would be pulling the debt limit brinksmanship right in the middle of the campaign guaranteeing him a loss. I don't see anything wrong with his stance. Fuck 'em.

Kerry isn't a shoe-in for SoS. His goals of ushering through a major piece of legislation, such as the failed energy and Law of the Sea bills,, were disasters (to be fair, they weren't his fault) and Obama might have someone else in mind. He has been quite an effective and loyal surrogate to Obama, but I have a feeling Obama would appoint Susan Rice over him.
Click to expand...

Kerry would have a much easier time getting confirmed than Susan Rice.
 
D

Diablos

Member
isoquant said:
An interesting article from WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...63793c-f6db-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

Obama comes off as quite weak, a little bit out of his depth.
Click to expand...

Yeah but Congress dropped the ball. I'm disappointed that Pelosi and Reid were not more vocal about outright resisting a two-step deal before Obama had to step in and lay it all out. As he said it would have set a precedent that would have tarnished even more the relationship between Congress and the Presidency, particularly when the parties aren't the same, when it's time to raise the debt ceiling.

Sure Obama could have had a "Plan B" and it was a mistake not to, but the GOP were basically acting like economic terrorists (no joke), holding our country's economy hostage so they could make Obama a one-termer. It should have never got as extreme as it did. Republicans should have acted like adults and passed a sane debt ceiling bill in the first place.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
isoquant said:
An interesting article from WaPo:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...63793c-f6db-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

Obama comes off as quite weak, a little bit out of his depth.
Click to expand...

He's never been a leader, he's a concensus builder. But building concensus with law students at Harvard is different than building it among law makers of the opposite party. He clearly got rolled more than once during the debt fight.

You can tell Boehner had a good time being interviewed. I doubt anyone believes Obama "begged and moaned" over the phone.
 
A

Astaereth

Member
isoquant said:
An interesting article from WaPo:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...63793c-f6db-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

Obama comes off as quite weak, a little bit out of his depth.
Click to expand...

That article is partisan bullshit from Bob Woodward. I'm just annoyed it took me to the end of the article to determine that to be true. The phrase "fiscal cliff" is pretty much a dead giveaway, although the breathless prose that sounds like GOP fanfiction ("He blasted the president to his face"; "jaws dropped") is also indicative.
 
I

isoquant

Member
I read the whole thing. He comes off as smart (for once in dealing with those clowns) to me. If he didn't hold firm those GOP assholes would be pulling the debt limit brinksmanship right in the middle of the campaign guaranteeing him a loss. I don't see anything wrong with his stance. Fuck 'em.
Click to expand...

Diablos said:
Yeah but Congress dropped the ball. I'm disappointed that Pelosi and Reid were not more vocal about outright resisting a two-step deal before Obama had to step in and lay it all out. As he said it would have set a precedent that would have tarnished even more the relationship between Congress and the Presidency, particularly when the parties aren't the same, when it's time to raise the debt ceiling.

Sure Obama could have had a "Plan B" and it was a mistake not to, but the GOP were basically acting like economic terrorists (no joke), holding our country's economy hostage so they could make Obama a one-termer. It should have never got as extreme as it did. Republicans should have acted like adults and passed a sane debt ceiling bill in the first place.
Click to expand...

I agree that Obama's position was the right one - he just completely mismanaged the politics.

The narrative that Woodward seems to be laying down with his new book (based on the extracts that have been released so far) is that Obama simply doesn't know how to negotiate with Congress.

Woodward reserves his most damning indictment for Obama, whom he sees as well meaning but often stumbling, and cocky and remote — a cold fish with a high hand who needlessly alienates potential “friends.”
Click to expand...

I'd say that it is a fair criticism. And one that has been made many times before by many different people.

People often post 'why is campaign Obama so much better than President Obama!?'. I think the reason is clear. Obama's experience and talents lie in giving speeches, community organising etc. not the hard-nosed politicking that really gets things done as president. He should have spent longer in the Senate.
 
M

Measley

Junior Member
Anyone criticizing Obama's negotiation abilities with congress needs to place that argument in the context of a Republican congress who has no political motivation to work with the president. Keep in mind, we're talking about a party who is actively voting out members of congress who are willing to cooperate with the president of the United States. How anyone could say that any of this is due to anything Obama has done is beyond me.
 
D

Diablos

Member
It's hard to work with people who a. Don't act like adults and b. Don't really want to live up to their responsibilities. I'm tired of hearing that Obama can't box with Congress. It's bullshit. Complete bullshit. These are people, as previously stated, who will throw people in their own party out of Congress for even attempting to work with the President.

You can't negotiate with people like that.
 
C

Cloudy

Banned
I agree that Obama's position was the right one - he just completely mismanaged the politics.

The narrative that Woodward seems to be laying down with his new book (based on the extracts that have been released so far) is that Obama simply doesn't know how to negotiate with Congress.
Click to expand...

How exactly do you deal with this kind of obvious bullshit from people who just want to destroy your presidency? Obama has bent over backwards to compromise with these guys and all he gets is a slap in the face. He made the right decision on this. Anyone who says otherwise is ridiculous.

PS: Woodward is full of shit.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Measley said:
Anyone criticizing Obama's negotiation abilities with congress needs to place that argument in the context of a Republican congress who has no political motivation to work with the president. Keep in mind, we're talking about a party who is actively voting out members of congress who are willing to cooperate with the president of the United States. How anyone could say that any of this is due to anything Obama has done is beyond me.
Click to expand...
Yeah, really. Why the hell would anyone think that Mitch McConnell would negotiate in good faith?

Woodward's account certainly doesn't inspire any confidence in Pelosi or Reid, either. It seemed like they were content with letting Boehner and McConnell walk over them.
 
C

Cloudy

Banned
Woodward's account certainly doesn't inspire any confidence in Pelosi or Reid, either. It seemed like they were content with letting Boehner and McConnell walk over them.
Click to expand...

Maybe Reid but this doesn't sound like Pelosi at all. She has zero incentive to go along with any of Boehner's shit
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Cloudy said:
Maybe Reid but this doesn't sound like Pelosi at all. She has zero incentive to go along with any of Boehner's shit
Click to expand...
True and that was one of the red flags there. As it turned out, Boehner needed Democrats' votes to pass the debt ceiling deal, and she knew it the whole time.
 
M

Measley

Junior Member
Negotiation-cartoon.jpg
 
I

isoquant

Member
It is true that Obama has worked in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, but the argument that Woodward is making is more nuanced than "he should have compromised more when dealing with Republicans". The argument is that he has failed to connect and to negotiate with just about everyone.

Cf Biden:

Biden was the Republican ‘whisperer.’
Known for this propensity to muddle things up—forget microphones are on, curse in public—Biden is often seen as the Democrats’ version of a black eye. But during debt crisis debates, he was Obama’s secret weapon. When the president decided to set up a fiscal commission of politicians from both sides of the aisle, Biden was put in charge of recruiting and befriending a Republican who would “go along with tax increases.” Former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson was that rare gem and, although they had little in common, Biden used his 18 years of Senate experience to convince Simpson to join what Simpson later called “a suicide mission.” Biden’s ability to connect with the most unlikely of candidates, showed through with his involvement in the congressional meetings on the nation’s potential default. There he forged a strong working relationship and understanding with Cantor, a Republican and friend of the Tea Party.
Click to expand...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...om-bob-woodward-s-book-price-of-politics.html

Forging alliances and schmoozing with congressmen (both Dems & Reps) is just not Obama's thing. Remember that report the other day that Obama refuses to spend any time past 6:00pm meeting with lawmakers?

Some of the president's frustrated allies have complained that a seeming reluctance to build relationships with more members of Congress and Washington insiders has made it difficult for him to get business done.
Click to expand...
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/02/politics/obama-fatherhood/index.html

I maintain my earlier point: If Obama had spent longer in the Senate, he would have been a more effective President.
 
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