Some students in study hall yesterday asked me if I think President Obama will win the 2012 election. (Not all students are focused on finding ways around the firewall to watch YouTube at school.) I told them that the nomination of Mitt Romney offers the best chance of avoiding that outcome.
The good Dr. Schaff agrees with me. While darning Romney to the heck of faint praise ("Sadly, he is the most viable candidate running..."), Schaff find the rest of the GOP field sorely lacking in that it takes to be the leader of the free world:
It'd be nice if Rick Perry was not rhetorically challenged, but Republicans should be tired of presidential candidates that make you cringe every time they talk for fear they will go Torquemada on the English language. Speaking to the people is part of the modern presidency and Perry seems almost totally incapable of doing so. John Huntsman is like Mr. Rogers, if Mr. Rogers was a sanctimonious ass. Rick Santorum reminds me of Tanner from the original Bad News Bears. He's scrappy and hard working, but after a while you realize why so many people want to punch him in the face. Newt Gingrich is really smart, but apparently not smart enough to avoid being a failure as Speaker of the House and not smart enough not to cheat on his first two wives. Herman Cain is a breath of fresh air who just happens to be almost totally ignorant of foreign policy (beware the candidate that says, "I'll just go along with whatever the generals say"). Ron Paul and Michelle Bachman prove everyday why they are doomed to be back benchers. They are very good at preaching to the converted, but as their meager legislative records show, they have no ability to actually change anyone's mind. They seem totally ignorant of the fact that the median voter is not nearly as anti-government as they are. Should I discuss Gary Johnson? I thought not. I admire some things about all of these people, but this isn't about whom I admire or who I agree with. I admire and agree with a lot of people, myself for example, who I don't think should be president [Jon Schaff, "That Darn Republican Establishment," South Dakota Politics, 2011.10.19].
As I follow the threads of Dr. Schaff's reading, I find it interesting that Romney's most glaring weakness as a Republican contender is his support for a health care policy that is largely popular and largely working in Massachusetts. Leave it to Republicans to put ideology and slogans over practical policy solutions.
Maybe I could live with a President Romney. Like Schaff, I find that prospect less dismaying that the prospect of President ___ (name any other current GOP candidate). Of course, as Schaff rightly suspects, what I really want is a Kucinich 2012 insurgency.
No recent seated president has won re-election with high employment rates. If the economy start improving before the November 2012 election, then Mr. Obama has a good chance.
Cory, don't you find it disappointing that a vote in Iowa or New Hampshire will decide the primary race? Why should a voter in Iowa be that much more important than anywhere else?
Maybe your students were trying to engage you into conversation rather than do their assigned lessons ;D
Avoiding assignments? That's always a possibility, Michael. They read me well.
Nomination by Iowa and New Hampshire? Indeed, that system has problems. But as the 2008 Obama-Clinton tilt showed, those two states don't always have the first and final word.
Unemployment is a problem. We should all hope it goes down. But history may have less impact on Obama's chances of victory than the GOP's choice of nominee. Pick Romney, and you have a fair fight, unless the Tea Party goes ape and splits for a third-party challenge. Pick anyone else from the current crop, and we revisit 1984 with Obama playing Reagan.
I would add this lovely quotation about the Republican field to the discussion.
"A system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process. It is a primal scream," - Dana Milbank.
I would be less afraid of Romney if he had made money from things other than inheritance and laying off workers.
Like South Dakotans will have any other choice but to vote for whatever earth hater the Pubs push into the fray. Prof. Schaff might take a lesson from LK at the DP: People in the middle of the road should just sit out the 2012 presidential election.
Am I the only guy who still likes Obama around here? Come on, the guy is rockin' and rollin'. No, he's not as far left as I am, but he never said he was.
And Cory, maybe you can, but I'm not even going to entertain the thought of "living with" a Romney presidency. That guy is the walking definition of "bad faith." I wouldn't trust him with the White House silverware, let alone the Oval Office.
I recommend this article for your students trying to cut through the GOP fog in Study Hall. Maybe give the link to a few key student "influencers" and see if they'll take it home to the parents. Couldn't hurt.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/charts-economic-myths-jobs-deficit-taxes
no, bill, yer not.
Obama in 2012!
Bill, don't worry: Romney won't get my vote. Obama has it, flaws and all. But I would still enjoy an open Kucinich vs. Obama debate. I would thrill to see Obama march to Zucotti Park, jump on a milk crate, and shout, "I'm with you!" I understand the practical reality of the best we can do, and Romney would be a step back from that practical best. But I'll keep pushing for something even better.
Great link, Bill! Maybe I'll hand it out to the kids... in Google Translate French! :-)
Now yer talkin' Cory. But if you want somebody to really give Barack a good what for, I'd go with Bernie Sanders. Dennis is just so... well... Kucinich-ish.
The age of the new media has excited the misapprehension that personal preferences and opinions are arguments that necessarily have value or relevance, such as illustrated in the dismissive sentence "John Huntsman is like Mr. Rogers, if Mr. Rogers was a sanctimonious ass." It illustrates how current politics seems irredeemably fixed on the ad hominem in which the person being attacked is a total construction of personal prejudices and animosities which deny the the merits of accomplishment and performance that we once thought were what should define a candidate for office or employment. Snark may be fun to some, but it has no relevance to reality,
This gets at the biggest detraction of Romney. Until recently, the entire basis of his campaign was an anti-Obama meme railing against his competence which resonated with that old see-what-happens-when-you-let-a-person-of-this-ancestry-and-ethnicity-take-charge-of-the-White-House. Aside from dancing over his own health-care petard, Romney will have to account for the premise of his dismissive attacks, which, by the way, have a history in the sect with which he identifies.
When I posted my view about being politically displaced, I listed off several reasons that I voted for Obama in 2008--Torture, ending foreign adventuring, Patriot Paranoia Act rollback, NCLB rollback.
So far Obama’s administration has tortured Private Manning and assassinated an American citizen. He has used a secret tribunal to pick targets for assassination. He have boots on the ground in more conflicts than when President Obama took office. Some are "advisors" or mercenaries euphemistically called private contractors.
The administration has pushed through Patriot Paranoia Act extensions, and enhanced the worst parts of NCLB in Race to the Top.
I’m not going to vote for Romney. I have no reason to believe that President Obama will reverse course. Staying at home or doing a protest vote seems to be the only option I have. I don’t think I’m dealing with personality; I’m trying to deal with major issues.
David, wouldn't you love to see Romney reach across and try to put a hand on Barracks shoulder the way he did Perry in the last debate?
Fat chance.
If anything, I'm thinking the optics might look the other way around, as in :
Obama: "Aw... nice mitty mitty, here mitty, mitty, mitty."
Romney: "*purr, purr, purr....* ...uh... I mean row!"
LK you make an incisive distinction between reacting to actions and substance rather than to a straw man.
LK, I think Obama is in the process of cleaning up the Bush mess. I also think he got steam-rolled by the pentagon for the first couple of years but has made some course corrections along those lines and is now acting more and more on his own volition. Finally, I think we have to be realistic about American citizens who commit treason and declare themselves to be enemy combatants. In my mind, they surrender their citizenship and must be thus willing to accept the consequences of their actions.
The President is enjoying strong support from our base: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/10/lgbt-raising-big-for-barack-obama.html
I must disagree on your conclusion. While Romney stands the best chance against Obama out of the current crop of candidates, I think that the results of the 2012 election will largely be parallel to the 2004 election: An unpopular president, but the opposition has nothing to offer that excites voters enough to unseat the incumbent president. Romney lacks the ability to effectively energize undecided voters enough to beat Obama. Regardless of job approval ratings, Obama has always had high approval ratings when it comes to who he is as a person, often hovering around 80%. Romney, on the other hand, comes off as just another boring old man. When it comes to energizing voters, he has the same effect as John McCain: an idle purr.
Bill, Obama is cleaning up the Iraq mess: out by the end of this year.
Obama's Favorability/Unfavorability current standing is 46% favorable vs. 45% unfavorable. Not quite 80%.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_favorableunfavorable-643.html#polls
More importantly, his job approval at this stage of his presidency is only higher than Carter's and his is in the 16th percentile (bottom quintile) in history.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150230/Obama-Job-Approval-Average-Slides-New-Low-11th-Quarter.aspx
Troy, you're completely missing the point of my statement. That's his job approval rating, not his rating on his likability. To quote Republican pollster Glen Bolger: "Base GOP voters do not like Obama's policies, and they dislike him personally (some more vehemently than others). However, we had consistently seen in our polls and focus groups that while swing voters are increasingly unhappy with his policies and his politics, they still liked Obama personally. " That was from September 16, 2011.
Bill,
A couple of quick responses: I promise not to mention Masons or the New World Order :)
Anwar al-Awlaki was certainly guilty of treason, but there's a huge difference between capture and trial or killing on the battlefield and the targeted assassination of an American citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki's existence doesn't justify the creation of a secret tribunal to determine who should be targeted for assassination. If the US is going to target citizen's on foreign soil, there's nothing to prevent the same efforts from taking place on US soil? We are either a nation where the rule of law is paramount or we are a nation where the rule of law is a catch phrase to be tossed away whenever it becomes inconvenient. Secret tribunals and targeted assassination indicate we may be becoming the latter. By the way, I think the effort to get Bin Laden was done correctly based on the information given us.
You're point about cleaning up Bush's mess is valid. The pentagon may have made Obama's job more difficult. Those points may mean that voting against Herman Cain whose foreign policy apparently consists of trusting the generals is a moral imperative.
I won't argue about Iraq; but the US is still expanding its military footprint. If that's Obama's decision, I disagree and believe it's a reason not to support him. If he's still being rolled by the Pentagon, then he's a slow learner and that's a reason to deny him re-election. I didn’t like the Empire in Star Wars. I don’t like in the real world either. (Is it just me or are we starting to treat special forces like Jedi knights?)
I know that I just said that voting against Cain might be a moral imperative; I’ll take that into consideration next fall, but with the Electoral College, South Dakota’s Democrats and independents don’t really get to vote for President of the United States anyway.
I notice that you didn’t mention torture, Private Manning, or the Patriot Act. I'll take that to mean that we agree on those
Troy's link is a little outdated. Here are a few more current polls.
http://pollingreport.com/obama_fav.htm
He's pretty solidly in the 50's among all voters, and very, very solid among members of his base (unlike Romney.)
http://pollingreport.com/wh12dem.htm
But if you want to see a REALLY stellar national, non-partisan number, check this one out:
http://pollingreport.com/o.htm
Barack's "secret weapon."
Yes, LK, we agree on all of it actually. I'm just trying to put it in perspective.
I can hardly stand knowing that we have drones that can zap people out of the sky controlled by someone 2000 miles away, like a video game, just as I can hardly understand knowing that we are the only nation ever to unleash nuclear war on another nation, and that the presidents who did it were Democrats.
I struggle with that every single day. But to withdraw from politics because of it would, at least in my case, be an act of despair, not dissent, especially when there is no acceptable alternative on the other side.
Thanks for engaging me on this, by the way.
It's a conversation well worth having, brother.
just 'cause i'm bored, cory: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/obama-iraq-eternal/
Billy,
You're correct on "But to withdraw from politics because of it would, at least in my case, be an act of despair, not dissent, especially when there is no acceptable alternative on the other side."
At the local level, you are totally correct.
It may be a cope out on my side, but the POTUS vote really doesn't matter. We're a long way from "Dewey Defeats Truman." We know which states are close and which ones are in the bag for either side. In a swing state, I could not in good conscience not make a POTUS vote or make a protest POTUS vote.
it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.
Sorry, didn't mean the diminutive Billy. My bad typing and proofreading skills strike again
"I promise not to mention Masons or the New World Order"
LK,
Once you open up your analysis (which I believe is already very good), you will understand that there is little worldview differences between the Bushes, Clinton, or Obama.
LK, "Billy" is okay with me. No worries. And I see what you mean about your POTUS vote, practically speaking. You should of course follow your heart and your conscience.
Romney persists in trying to frame a difference in values, purpose, and strategy as matters of competence:
"President Obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women."
That must have given somebody a headache to write. It really is kind of hard to write something that looks like it means something and actually doesn't.
No conservative Republican will vote for R-Obama-ney; he's a two-faced joke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OQoBxZZPqU
David, that sounds like the absurd, abstract puffery I heard in the clips of his Sioux Falls speech. It sounds as if he's straining to create some kind of high-sounding oratory that defies his managerial image.
Steve,
Once you open up your analysis (which I believe is already very good), you will understand that there is little worldview differences between the Bushes, Clinton, or Obama.
Thanks for the compliment. I responded here. http://thedisplacedplainsman.blogspot.com/2011/10/conspiracy-theories-philosophy-without.html
Cory,
Feel free to delete the link if you don't want to start the practice of folks linking to their own blogs in the comments. I don't see it happen much.
Leo, no apology or deletion necessary. I appreciate and happily promote your contributions to these great hyperlinked multilogues. Keep it up!
UPDATE, Rasmussen: Obama crushing Perry
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/2012_presidential_matchups
Gov. Gary Johnson believes the Ryan budget "borders on racist;" he was interviewed in Salon
South Dakota for Gary Johnson.
putting a fine point on red state failure:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/09/johnson-wins-in-pennslyvania-135637.html