Introducing Mitt Romney

"And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."

The above is from a blistering expose in Rolling Stone


"But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper."

the above is from The Economist, not exactly a left wing newspaper.

A second Rolling Stone article shows that Mitt Romney drove Bain into the ground until rescued by a federal loan that he engineered:

"The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds."

Mittdacity Jr.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein on vp candidate Paul Ryan's acceptance speech to the GOP convention:

 But really, the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech.


The media response Josh Marshall alluded to may be something like this: Call out the lies right in your headlines.

Update: The Most Dishonest Convention Speech Ever?

Media Backlash Against Ryan Acceptance Speech Continues

The Lies and Lies and Lies of Paul Ryan cont.

Lyin Ryan: The Media Pushback

Paul Ryan=Eddie Haskell

Doubling Down as the Party of Racism

Earlier today a clearly disgusted Josh Marshall posted this at TPM:

"No question. The Romney campaign has doubled down. All in on the race/lazy/dependency groove from here on out. No going back.
 
In private they’re all but bragging about it — specifically their run of welfare-centric commercials which they’re running at a red hot clip in swing states all across the country. It’s working, they say. The fact-checkers can go screw themselves. "

In a later post he added that the Romney campaign could still drop this line of attack but must do so soon because "for all intents and purposes the political press has placed the Romney campaign at a crossroads."  Which seems to mean that they won't get away with doing it covertly, they'll continue to get sharp questions, and the media will continue to point out the lies and racist appeal.  That of course may not mean anything to the GOPers at this desperate point.  For as one of their own said recently, the demographic trends being what they are, this is probably the last national election where something like this might work.

What that might look like--and why the Romney campaign is likely to ignore it--is implied in these quotes assembled by Andrew Sullivan's blog.  Kevin Drum is the latest journalist to note that, when it comes to being called on a lie,  "The Romney campaign just doesn't seem to care. If it works, they use it. It's like the campaign is being run by cyborgs."

Jonathan Chiat says this isn't entirely new: it was the way that the Bush administration governed: without any regard to the truth, to verifiable fact, to anything but conservative and neocon dogma.  Will voters notice this, and remember what it got us?

Meanwhile, there is concerted effort to suppress the story--by the GOP and apparently even CNN--of the  confirmed incident of someone at the Tampa convention--now reported as involving two people--who threw nuts at a female African American camera operator and cried, "This is how we feed animals" inside the convention hall.  The two people were said to be expelled immediately, but TPM reporters are getting stonewalled on details.

The Dream and the Reality of 2012

Ezra Klein in the Washington Post today on the Romney ads accusing President Obama of ending the work requirement for welfare in some states--a charge that Romney is making on the stump, and that reportedly will be the substance of Rick Santorum's speech to the GOPer convention today:

Beyond being flatly false, Romney’s ads are puzzlingly anachronistic. Welfare is a shrunken program...Meanwhile, few think the problem in this country is that the poor don’t want to work...

In modern politics, however, when a campaign begins doubling and tripling down on an unusual line of attack, it’s because it has reams of data showing the attack is working. What’s worrying is why this ad might be working.

 

Political scientist Michael Tesler partnered with the YouGov online polling service to test the question on 1,000 respondents... reports Tesler, “racial resentment affected whether people thought Romney will help the poor, the middle class and African Americans. Moreover, seeing the ad did not activate other attitudes, such as party or ideological self-identification. It only primed racial resentment.”

This is where things get tricky. Romney’s welfare ads are not racist. But the evidence suggests that they work particularly well if the viewer is racist, or at least racially resentful. And these are the ads that are working so unexpectedly well that welfare is now the spine of Romney’s 2012 on-air message in the battleground states."

Andrew Sullivan on his Daily Beast blog:

I try not to jump to conclusions about racial appeals - but the two-pronged campaign assault by Romney, on Medicare and welfare, does not rise to the level, in my view, of plausible deniability.
The key to both is the classic notion that unworthy blacks are taking from worthy whites. And so the Medicare ad uses white old faces expressing shock at the notion that Obama would transfer money from their retirement healthcare for health insurance for those without, i.e. the poor, who tend to be more minority than the rich. It's basically a lie - Ryan would cut the same from Medicare as Obama would, and there is no direct quid pro quo between the two policies. It's also dishonest: Ryan and Romney are promising to cut Medicare spending and yet are running against Obama for doing exactly that.

Then there's the simple bald lie that Obama is allowing welfare recipients to escape work requirements. I don't remember a campaign in my lifetime which based an entire line of attack on a total fabrication, in fact a reverse of the truth. The welfare waivers are designed exclusively to experiment with how to increase the effectiveness of the work requirement for welfare, and waivers have been granted to Republican governors as well. And yet we get this from the Romney campaign:

"Our most effective ad is our welfare ad," a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O'Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. "It's new information."

It's not. It's new disinformation. It's Orwellian propaganda.

 The simple assumption of racial politics as the driver of campaigns is what's striking. Karl Rove became what he is - a persistent whitehead on the face of American politics - because he learned the art of race-baiting politics in the South. Romney - having given up on Latinos and blacks and gays - is now betting the bank on the white resentment that has been fast losing potency since the 1990s. "

Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memoral in Washington, 49 years ago today:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Reporter David Schuster reported that a GOP convention attendee was ejected for throwing nuts at an African American camerawoman for CNN and shouting, "This is how we feed animals." CNN confirmed to TPM.

Update: The chief difference between this year's race baiting by the GOP and past examples, cf. 1988 is that some of the media reporters are calling them on it, to their faces.  Josh Marshall at TMP quotes another example.

New Circus News

The circus tents are going up in Tampa.  Rumors of a circular firing squad attraction in the center ring are probably exaggerated, but... On Monday, a GOPer U.S. Senator suggested that unless the party fixes its problems with women in the next several weeks, Romney will lose.  A story circulated that Chris Christie turned down the v.p. because he believes Romney will lose.

One indication that last week's fracus over rape and abortion and the image of extremism in general are having an impact: a Pew poll found more people interested in the GOPer platform than in either Romney or Ryan's convention speeches.  Interest in economic news however was substantially higher than in the Akin story.

A big uncertainty continues to be the track and impact of a tropical storm which is expected to become a hurricane and make landfall on Tuesday.  Concern over the storm's impact on Tampa led to Monday's convention events being cancelled--and to what has to be the most revealing and the craziest Rush Limbaugh conspiracy theory ever:  that the Obama administration manipulated the storm track prediction to subvert the GOPer convention.  Really:

  "The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama,” said Limbaugh.

Meanwhile, several outlets were chortling over the apparent Romney campaign goof of giving away hardback copies of Romney's book to convention delegates which contains his suggestion that Romneycare should be expanded nationally, instead of the paperback edition which says more or less the opposite.  Goof-up it is but also totally in character.  Giving the hardbacks away tells me that Romney had a lot of unsold books in storage--why not give them away, save on warehouse costs and probably get a tax deduction to boot!   Makes perfect Romneysense.

Race and Class

I am a white person, a white male, an old white male.  What constitutes racism in a person's psyche is complicated and in some ways unknowable.  I do believe that we all carry some unconscious racial prejudices that we absorb culturally, and that we as white people in a traditionally white dominated society possess beneath the surface. That includes white people who marched on Washington with Martin Luther King (as I did) 49 years ago today.  That commitment didn't automatically eradicate all racial prejudice or bias. It takes a different perspective brought to our attention to reveal these into our consciousness.  That in part was what "consciousness-raising" was about, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of race and class.

Racist behavior however can be determined more easily, though it too can be complicated.  Racist policy is easier to determine objectively: results and consequences count, not intention.  That's why under certain sections of the Voting Rights Act, it is the effect of laws and policies on racial minorities, not the intentions of the lawmakers and rule makers, that is the determining factor.

The current attempts by the Romney campaign to appeal to racial stereotypes in their lying ads about welfare, among other overt and covert tactics, is racist by definition, for it is designed to exploit conscious and unconscious racism in white voters; moreover it is doing so by attempting to link racist implications with the intentions of a black President. 

Unconscious racism, by the way, can be really unconscious.  It is very often supported by an apparently rational, allegedly fact-based allegation or theory about what's really happening in the real world.  And suggestions or allegations of unconscious racism typically are met with outraged denial.  That's why some political observers suggest that part of the intent of the current Romney strategy is to get "liberals" to charge white working class voters with racism, which will motivate them to repudiate it by voting against "liberals," and President Obama.

Class on the other hand is working against the multimillionaire Romney, with his multiple homes and dancing horse, Swiss bank account and Cayman Island tax shelters.  It's a problem not only of image and unconscious bias but of fairness.  All the taxes that rich businessman Romney avoids are paid by the rest of us and our descendants. 

The class divide is immense, and voters are only starting to learn how immense.  For example, Think Progress visualized a fact about the wealth of GOPer moneyman Sheldon Adelson, who recently pledged half a million bucks to a congressional campaign.  With a fortune estimated at $25 billion, Adelson could give half a million to each and every GOPer running for Congress-for the next 128 years.

The Romney-Ryan program is transparently a huge power grab for the very wealthy, at the expense of everyone else, first and foremost the poor and the sick.  Unless you are very wealthy, being sick for very long still leads to being poor, and with Ryan hacks to Medicaid, to being poor and without medical treatment.

The only way to get this program enacted, the only way to get elected for the GOPer ticket, is to get a high proportion of the white vote.  The estimate being bandied about today was 61%.  Combine that with a fact that even I found startling.  I've been calling the GOP the White People's Party for awhile, because that's the effect of their policies and their pronouncements, and the majority of their membership.  I figured it would be as high as 75% of the party.  But I was wrong.  According to Pew, the proportion of GOPers who are white is 89%.  In 2012 we have one of two major political parties that is composed of almost 90% white people.

The GOPer combination of race and class was exposed in a heated response to GOP chair Reince Priebus by MSNBC's Chris Matthews.  By my lights, Matthews can be way off base at times, but this time he's not only nailed it but did so with electrifying eloquence:

“I have to call you on this, Mr. Chairman,” Matthews said in an appearance with Priebus on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as he responded to Republicans’ criticism that Obama is running a very negative campaign. “But they’ve both negative. That cheap shot about ‘I don’t have a problem with my birth certificate’ was awful. It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card.”

“You can play your games and giggle about it but the fact is your side playing that card. When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you’re playing and everybody knows what game you’re playing. It’s a race card and yeah, if your name’s Romney, yeah you were well born, you went to prep school, yeah, brag about it. This guy has an African name and he’s got to live with it. Look who’s gone further in their life. Who was born on third base? Making fun of the guy’s birth certificate issue when it was never a real issue except for the right wing.”

Matthews exposed the sense of class privilege that lurks behind the coded racism of the Romney campaign.  When Romney and Ryan say they didn't need government help to succeed (which by the way is a lie to begin with) it may sound good to lower middle class people for whom applying for welfare would mean a devastating loss of self-status, but only if they forget that Romney and Ryan came from wealthy families, and could buy their way into the best schools and the networks of class success. 

The Obamas freely admit that their success depended not only on their own hard work and determination, not only on their parents' dedication and sacrifice, but on help from government and other institutions in the form of school scholarships and loans, etc.  They celebrate this as an American thing, and see it as a key to expanding the middle class.  They want it for others.  They want it for all others.  Without that kind of help, lower middle class white kids like me never would have gone to college.  I don't think that's changed.  We're still all in this together.  And that the definition of "all" has expanded is really to the greater good of us all, and the future.
        

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“We have destroyed the forest, our rivers run dry, our wildlife is all but extinct, our climate ruined...but I pass by the woods I’ve saved from the ax. I hear the forest sighing...I planted that forest. And I think: perhaps things may be in our power. Perhaps the climate itself is in our control.”

Anton Chekhov: Uncle Vanya (1897), as adapted in English by David Mamet from a literal translation (1989.)

Storms

Having already cancelled the first day of their convention (but it wasn't going to be on TV anyway, so what was this point?  The mega-billionaires will just have more time to party) GOPers in Tampa await the uncertain effects of a tropical storm/maybe hurricane.

But the news contains seeds of other storms: GOPer presidential candidate Ron Paul is refusing to endorse Mitt Romney, former Florida governor GOPer Charlie Crist endorsed President Obama for reelection ( "I'm confident that President Barack Obama is the right leader for our state and the nation. I applaud and share his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history.") and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee promises "fire from heaven" on behalf of disgraced senatorial candidate Paul Akin.

Meanwhile I've discovered the political dispatches of Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker.  In his post on the oncoming storm he writes that Mitt Romney has called on the federal government to respond to the danger with tax cuts for the wealthy.  "If this hurricane is as powerful as predicted, it could destroy many people’s second and third homes,” Mr. Romney said. “In that worst-case scenario, it would be inhumane to ask them to pay more than thirteen per cent.”  His running mate Paul Ryan warns against Washington intrusion.“If the federal government got involved with this hurricane, they’d make the usual mistake of sending food, water, and medical supplies,” he said. “Clearly, what this situation calls for is vouchers.”

GOP War on...American Indians?

A war on women.  A war on Latinos.  A war on gay and lesbian Americans.  A war on African Americans. War on seniors. War on students.  A war on young, old and non-white voters. War on the poor.  War on the middle class. War on the Earth. War on the truth. Not to mention wars on Iran, Russia and China. Aside from the super rich, is there anybody the GOP has not declared war on?

How about war on the Indians?  After all, isn't how it all started?

Republican National Committee leader Pat Rogers wrote emails to New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s staff asserting that attending the tribal summit of  the state's Native American tribes “dishonored” Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

"The state is going to hell," Rogers wrote.

GOPers are finding ways every day to add new meaning to the term "reactionary."  Rogers manages to return to those thrilling days of the 19th century--actually the 18th and 17th as well. 

Here in Humboldt the wounds of Indian massacres are still healing.  This won't help.


Sadly, this is not new.  GOPers criticized President Obama for convening a national tribal summit. Though it was GOPer Senator Brownback in 2005 who first sponsored a congressional resolution to apologize to the Cherokee and Native Americans for the Trail of Tears, it didn't pass until 2009.  When President Obama signed it, Bryan Fischer of the Rabid Right American Family Association objected that the US had nothing to apologize for.  (The above watercolor, Shadow of the Owl commemorating the Trail of Tears is from the Guthrie Studios.  Below is the Wiyot Tribe Sacred Sites logo by tribal member Leona Wilkinson, commemorating the massacre on Indian Island in Eureka, CA in 1860.)

Not that the American Indians are a big voting block.  But this tidbit is sure to make the rounds.  Another 0% group for the GOP?

 

Is there a form of racism they aren't ready to embrace?  Look out, Asian Americans.  You may well be next.

Unmasked

With his remarks in Michigan, Mitt Romney unmasked the GOP campaign racism referred to in the post below, and made it top of the ticket official.

The Obama campaign responded that Romney made the “decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement.”   The remark may seem like a joke but it sure wasn't delivered that way.  It sounded like a "patriotic" assertion.  Here's a link to the video of the moment.

The Big Lie(s) 2012

Yes, it does seem that the circus is coming back to town.  The GOP convention set to begin on Monday, to be greeted by a tropical storm [update: likely hurricane] with an embarrassingly Biblical name (but it's no real threat, says David Letterman, because David Akin says that no legitimate hurricane ever does real damage in Florida.)  Akin is himself gathering steam, money and support, the most vocal of which so far comes from Mike Huckabee.  His statement ends: "He made his mistake, but was man enough to admit it and apologize. I'm waiting for the apology from whoever the genius was on the high pedestals of our party who thought it wise to not only shoot our wounded, but run over him with tanks and trucks and then feed his body to the liberal wolves....Now is the time to focus on electing a conservative Senate Majority. And if the NRSC and RNC and the money-rich PACS won't help Todd Akin get us to the majority, then we'll do it without them."

Them's fighting words from the Rabid Right leader who is scheduled to speak at the GOPer convention.

Meanwhile some of the media dunderheads express disbelief that President Obama could be at least a little ahead in the polls when Americans say the country is on the wrong track.  (Morning Joe throws up a graphic that says 36% believe the U.S. is on the right track, and then he refers to "under a third of people" believe this, which certainly challenges my arithmetic.)  How could Obama survive that, they wonder.  Well, consider that there is something called Congress, dominated by GOPers who've made a mockery of it, and it is polling around 12% or even 10% approval.  Could that possibly have something to do with the feeling that the country is on the wrong track?  Huh??

There's a certain tension release to the humor but it's black humor, maybe gallows humor, because the situation is pretty grim.  Women in particular are expressing real distress and anger over the Akin-Ryan tyranny that threatens them.  And it was only a short step from criminalizing abortion and even some birth control to a candidate for sheriff who claimed he would have authority to kill doctors and women violating such laws.

It's crazy and it's not funny.  Even this premature glee by Democrats and tv commentators on the Missouri race--which Frank Rich agrees with me is not necessarily a foregone conclusion--when what the RomneyRyan campaign is actually doing, and how effective it might be, is being drowned out.  One of which is characteristically taking an old tendency to a classic extreme with the Big Lie.

The concept of The Big Lie has quite a history. Hitler ascribed it to Jews, Goebbels pinned it on the English, but it's become famous as a technique that Hitler and Goebbels employed in Germany. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services officially thought so, describing Hitler's core rules that included "people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

The Romney campaign itself as well as the Rovian money machine are beginning to spend their hundreds of millions on several Big Lies. Two stand out for being (1) factually disproven by neutral observers (2) repeated anyway, in campaign commercials and stump speeches.

Lie #1 is that it is Obama and not Romney-Ryan that is cutting Medicare.  The Obama cuts to Medicare costs do not cut benefits, now or in the future.  The RR plan shortens the life of Medicare even in the short run, and threatens its existence in their ten year plan. The Obama cuts to waste in the program will extend its life by eight years.  But since most people understand that the Ryan budget turns Medicare into a voucher program that will mean seniors won't be able to afford medical care, the Rove doctrine of attack your opponent's strengths is combined with the Big Lie. 

Lie #2--and the one that seems to have the most money behind it at the moment--is that the Obama administration has cut work requirements from welfare.  This is a complete lie, as every neutral observer and even some GOPers say.  But repeating it over and over can make it true--especially if its intended audience wants to believe it.

And that's the other key element of the Big Lie: it confirms an existing prejudice or worldview based on biased beliefs.  It's why it worked when applied to the Jews.  And it's why it may be working with the white (male) voters being targeted, because it is a barely coded correspondence: welfare recipients=black people and Latinos, but mostly black people.

Even that is a Big Lie, because most welfare recipients in the U.S. are white.  But it is a stereotype that a certain strain within the white population wants to embrace.  What makes it most toxic and disgusting this time is the implication that the first African American President is doing this.

The idea that the 2008 election proved that the U.S. truly has become post-racial was always dubious, and the years since then have proven this wishful thinking utterly false. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about this in the Atlantic: "Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president."

At least one observer believes this Big Lie may be working in the swing states, while everybody's attention is diverted elsewhere.  These Big Lies don't have to be motivating to everyone.  The Medicare lie is basically to muddy the waters and blunt the issue's effect on RomneyRyan.  So far the polls don't show this but they've just started to tell it.  The welfare lie is designed to increase RRs white male vote, to compensate for all the voters in other categories they are losing big time.

Nice white people don't want to hear that racism is a motivation for some voters, nor that nice white people like RomneyRyan might be using racism as they deny it, and accuse their accusers of it, and of fomenting hate.  But non-white people see it pretty clearly.  That could be why in the latest NBC poll, Romney Ryan is getting 0% of the African American vote.  That's way less than a third, ain't it, Joe?

This is where the Big Lie works best--to seemingly justify and further feed unacknowledged prejudices.  Those prejudices make it sound true even when everybody else agrees that it is not true.  We've seen this before.  The Big Lie works best when it exploits the unacknowledged and perhaps unconscious racism of nice people, of good Americans.

Speaking of Fascist Techniques...

Another technique that's a favorite of political entities transitioning into totalitarian rule, not to mention totalitarian rulers themselves, is intimidation.  Sometimes it's by thugs in uniforms, sometimes it's just by thugs, and sometimes it's by prim white people acting like thugs.

Especially when you're black or Latino, and they're in your voting place while you're voting, harrassing you and other voters as well as election officials.

As an amateur stormtrooper adjunct to official voter suppression, that's the intimidation technique practiced by a right wing group called True the Vote, that pioneered its intimidation efforts in Texas and notably in Wisconsin, where it happily bragged that it helped Scott Walker avoid being recalled in that election.  Now they're training a million fascist army to hover over the wrong color voters in every precinct they can manage to barge into.

That's in this eye-opening nine minutes by Rachel Maddow.  Otherwise it's a vastly undercovered situation--perfect for the intimidators.

The Party's Over

The party that denies science and even near-unanimous scientific findings because scientists are politically motivated and don't have the right religious beliefs, but instead this party coalesces around a few paranoid beliefs that it continues to hold despite all evidence that they are not true.  The party that says that education and public information media are in the hands of the wrong people and therefore nothing they say can ever be trusted--only the party and its related institutions can be trusted. 

The party that says it is for the people, but works hard to deny people it doesn't like any vote or influence.  The party that says it is for restricted government but zealously supports and--when in power--enacts laws that extend government power into the private lives of citizens.  The party that uses extreme rhetoric and glorifies violence.  The party that mutters darkly about certain minorities and proposes laws to control, marginalize or just get rid of them.  The party that lies as a matter of course and policy, and its adherents believe the ends justify any means, because it alone follows divine will, it alone is patriotic, it alone is in the Right.  

While many in the country failed to take this party seriously, or to believe it meant what it said, and therefore didn't feel the need to oppose it, it gained in strength until it took complete power.

What party would this be?  And in what country?  What year?

We're witnessing an amazing moment in American politics.  The Rabid Right which has taken over the Republican Party with the cooperation of its power structure, now threatens to topple that structure as well.  The signal event of course is Todd Akin's refusal to kowtow to the GOPer power structure and drop out of the race for the U.S. Senate from Missouri.  Nobody outside Missouri even knew his name a few days ago, but his remarks on "legitimate rape" etc. created a media and political firestorm.  Every establishment GOPer imaginable condemned his remarks and called on him to drop out.  His establishment money has dried up, at least for now.  But the Rabid Religious Right leaders came to his rescue, and evidently he's raking in enough contributions to feel he can defy them.  Besides, he's reportedly the latest GOP politician to believe that God told him to run.

What is temporarily important here is that the GOPer establishment went on the record, and he is defying them. They've lost control of their own party.  If he stays in and especially if he wins that seat, there will be no stopping the Rabid Right.  Their influence on  Romney, which has already proven to be decisive, would itself grow to become uncontrollable. 

  Also important--and we'll see if it is temporary--is that the Akin affair has shone a searchlight on the GOP platform and its support for a personhood amendment--like the one that vp candidate Paul Ryan supported, cosponsored with Aikin--that would criminalize all abortions in all situations, as well as some common forms of birth control and even in vitro fertilization, which would make three of Romney's sons criminals.  Democrats are busy publicizing the real links between Paul Ryan, Akin and support for these laws.

Democrats, say some stories, can't believe their luck.  It brings back memories of what we used to call the "lunatic fringe," who were always good for a few laughs.  But there is no luck here, and no laughs.  With all the money the Romney campaign is amassing, they can say anything they want to and turn that money into the biggest media megaphone the world has ever seen.  They've already used it to try to turn the tables on Medicare, and by some accounts they've managed to convince people that Obama threatens Medicare but they don't.   Remember that their 2010 victories were largely fueled by just these same baldfaced lies and false claims.

Their totalitarian tendencies are clear in the states where they continue to do everything in their considerable power to deny people their right to vote.  Local election officials in both Ohio and Florida who have legally defied their dictates are being threatened by the GOPer governors with being fired.  In Pennsylvania, they are merely trying to manipulate their supreme court into deciding the fate of that voter ID law after the election.

The GOPers are now far, far to the right of what is generally believed to be the views of the American majority.  Certainly they threaten the rights and the interests of almost every conceivable category apart from fossil fuel billionaires and other wealthy predators--women, Latinos, African Americans, students, the middle class, the poor--and still the polls nationally and in key states are close. 

At this point however there are only two ways that President Obama and most Democrats lose in 2012: that just enough people believe the billion dollar lies, and that just enough people don't vote.  Those who are prevented from voting constitute a deep danger.  But those who simply choose not to vote are the worst.       

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Don't confuse wealth with money."

Print Ritter
(Robert Duvall)
Broken Trail
painting: The Sower by Van Gogh

Don't Give Up

A federal court ruled that Florida's plan to shorten early voting hours discriminates against black citizens.  Under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, five Florida counties are ordered to restore early voting hours.

Though the court could restore hours only in the five counties specifically covered by that section, which applies to areas where discrimination was practiced before, it's clear that asserting that the new restrictions discriminate against minority voters applies generally.  This might make precedent for other cases, even the Pennsylvania ID law, in federal court.  Whether such a case can be brought and decided in time to affect the November election is unclear but doubtful.

The appeal in Commonwealth court to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was filed on Friday. It may be the last chance for timely legal remedy. Also Friday, its most visible plaintiff, 93 year old Viviette Applewhite, finally obtained her temporary ID card which should enable her to vote in November.

Rabid Right sites immediately chortled at the apparent evidence that the case has no merit, but of course they draw exactly the wrong conclusion.  It was only through an arduous, time-consuming process, with plenty of aid from others and likely some bending of the rules that less publicized cases won't get, that resulted in this outcome.  The photo above shows one early step--obtaining a birth certificate.  The Washington Post describes the last steps:

 Applewhite received her identification card after riding two public-transit buses to a Department of Transportation licensing office and presenting a clerk with her Medicare card from the 1990s, a state document listing her name and Social Security number in her own handwriting, and proof of her Philadelphia address, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
None of the documents, however, linked her birth certificate name of Viviette Virene Brooks to Viviette Applewhite. PennDOT’s licensing bureau director Janet Dolan said Friday that clerks are able to make exceptions to the document requirements and work with applicants.

The Pennsylvania ID law is a blatant effort to take away the voting rights of  minority, student and elderly citizens who are likely to vote for Democrats and President Obama.  But until that obvious violation of a basic American right can be remedied in court or by legislation, people need to look at what this 93 year old woman did to defy the intent of this law and vote anyway.  And they need to do  whatever it takes to make their vote count.

It took her not just weeks or even months but years.  Her message: "You just have to keep trying,” Applewhite said. “Don’t give up.”

Re-Running the Nightmare

The polls are going to be pretty useless for the next month.  The next poll that will say something about the state of the presidential race will be in September, a week after the Democratic convention.  Although of course we will be watching the size of the expected bumps after each convention.

The fact that it's August also leads me to not be so concerned with the "enthusiasm" numbers--which purport to measure how many people of each party say they are engaged in the election.  People who have pretty much made up their mind are unlikely to express a lot of interest in the campaign.  Plus people who don't focus until the fall.

But there are some other indications that do trouble me, especially in relation to GOPer voter suppression laws and their likely effect of preventing people who want to vote from doing so, or at least making it harder.

One is a poll finding I saw sweep by on TV--I don't know how credible it is, but it said that of the people who said they do NOT plan to vote, nearly 50% would vote for Obama, and 20% for Romney.

The other is this Boston Globe story which shows that new Democratic registration in swing states is way behind the 2008 pace, despite vigorous efforts by the Obama campaign, and that Republicans and Independents are registering in greater numbers.  The Obama campaign points out that partly because of those huge gains in 2008, there are fewer unregistered Dems and their overall numbers are good, a point that the Globe story concedes to some extent.  But it is troubling nonetheless.

The nightmare I am starting to relive is 2000.  I remember how a lot of voters, including progressives, entirely spoiled by the Clinton years, felt it wasn't all that important who won the presidency, Al Gore or George W. Bush.  It was ok to make a statement for Nader.  It was ok to not bother to follow the campaign, and especially to not bother to vote. 

We all know how that turned out, and believe me, it turned out only a little worse than I believed it would during that summer and fall leading up to the campaign.  Maybe the emotional tide, fed by extraordinary events and creative outpouring, isn't there this year to propel the Obama campaign.  But there should be one motivating emotion, and that's fear. 

The rights and protections that could dissipate and disappear are staggering--there's been nothing like this threat in my lifetime.  A Romney Ryan presidency would be a greater disaster than eight years of Bush, and on top of those, will weaken this country's ability to respond to future dangers and opportunities to a truly scary degree.

This is a big, diverse country with lots of crosscurrents.  But sometimes, as in 2000, a mood takes over and its like watching the last act of a tragedy.  I don't like that feeling.

There's another motivation to consider as well: that this election more than any in my lifetime, the very act of voting is a powerful statement.  It is a powerful statement not only on behalf of candidates, but on behalf of the right to vote itself.  It is the only weapon we all have equally to defend our rights and our lives, and to promote what we believe is essential for the future.  We are always voting for imperfect people in a pretty corrupt system.  But we can help limit the damage and improve the chances for positive change.  We do this one by one, vote by vote.  But if enough of us do so, we get the better outcome.

To not exercise that right and that power is--this year more than ever--to invite losing that right and that power.  To not do everything in your power to vote this year is to cede the future to oligarchs and fascists, without a fight, and quite possibly, weakening or taking away this potent weapon from future generations.

What few policies and positions the Romney Ryan ticket are taking--those that are not outright lies--are so extreme and destructive that some analysts predict a landslide against them.  Women, Latinos, African Americans, seniors, students, the poor, the middle class--virtually everybody but a small number of rich white men and deranged members of the Rabid Right would pay an enormous price if the policies they advocate were put in place, even partially.   Both men are singularly unprepared to be president and vice-president by any standard of any election in generations.  Their domestic policies are oppressive and destructive, their foreign and military policies are all dangerous bluster and aggressive ignorance.  Yet such is the nature of politics in 2012 that complacency by Democratic voters could hand them the reigns of power.

So this is my nightmare that I am now reliving.  I really don't want this nightmare to be rerunning in 2012.

Democracy's Daylight Robbery

A scene in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 2008 that totalitarian Republicans
 want to make sure doesn't happen in 2012

Some attempted power grabs are subtle.  Some are audacious but obscured--maybe the method is too new to be recognized, or nobody's watching, or everybody is too scared to call it.  But this one is out in the open now, clear as day.

How clear.  Follow the Q & A...

Q
Are any of the new voter ID laws, the new limits on voting times, the attempted purges of registrations, happening in states with Democratic governors and legislatures?

A
No.  None.

Q
When outside groups who study such things have examined the likely impact of these laws, is there even one case where they say the party more likely to benefit is the Democrats?

A
No.  None.

Q
What are three crucial states that the Republican presidential ticket must win in order to win the presidency?

A
Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Q
Did these states go Republican in 2008?

A
No.

Q
Are there new laws suppressing the votes of likely Democratic voters in all three states, estimated by outside groups to be enough to turn the presidential vote to Republican?

A
Yes.  Even in Pennsylvania, where President Obama won by 750.000 votes and leads in the polls by high single or double digits.  That's because the voter ID is expected to disenfranchise upwards of 15% of the voters in Philadelphia, with the bulk of the state's Democratic votes, and where a lot of people don't need to drive and don't have driver's licenses,  particularly if they are poor or simply can't afford the time and money to go through the process of getting birth certificates etc. and applying for these IDs, in time for the November election.  Disenfranchising this many people in the same city, mostly black and Latino, elderly and young voters, is unprecedented in American history.

Q
Are voter ID laws and these other new laws needed to stop rampant voting fraud?

A
No. 
So contemptuous of its own argument was the PA government that they didn't bother offering evidence of in-person voter fraud in PA, because there isn't any.  The only two cases of voting fraud nationally in the news this year are by Republican officials cheating in other ways.  In-person fraud is rare--only 10 documented cases in the last decade, and several of these were dumb mistakes rather than intended to defraud.

Q
Where in Ohio have there been problems with too few voting machines for the number of people who want to vote, resulting in lines so long that it takes upwards of four hours to vote, and so people who can't devote that much time are effectively disenfranchised?

A.
Cities.  Where there are lots of people. Where there are lots of black, Latino, older and younger voters.   And lots of Democrats.

Q
Where did the Republican administration of Ohio target restrictions on voting hours?

A.  Cities.  Where there are lots of people. Where there are lots of black, Latino, older and younger voters.  And lots of Democrats.

Q If these laws were sincere attempts to limit voter fraud while making sure that people have enough time to learn about the law (which changes how they have voted their entire lives) and to acquire the necessary IDs, especially when the places where they can obtain them have very limited hours and staff, why didn't legislators give reasonable time for all of this and mandate that the law takes effect in 2014 or 2016?

A.  Do I really need to answer that?

 Need I go on?  It could not be clearer what the intent is.  It goes way beyond standard politics to attack the one right all Americans have equally, the most fundamental right in a representative democracy.

Two news notes on this topic.  As I predicted, the Ohio sec of state has mandated uniform voting hours throughout the state--everywhere will have restricted hours, virtually guaranteeing the long lines that threw voting into chaos in 2004 but that did not recur in 2008 because of extended hours and more opportunities for early voting.

Early commentary on the PA case faults the judge's legal theory and the precedent he chose. However the judge made some highly questionable judgments on matters of fact.  He rejected the studies that showed that the law disenfranchises up to 9% of PA voters, and apparently also its disproportionate effect on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  Why? On what basis?  He ruled that PA has plenty of time to inform voters of the law (when the PA sec of state testified that she herself did not know what the law says) and voters have plenty of time to get the IDs before the November election, less than three months from now.  Again, on what basis?  Nobody but the Republicans believe this.   The decision isn't just wrong.  It's shameful.

The Siege of Pennsylvania

The worst possible news on the voter ID law in Pennsylvania--the state judge who heard a strong case to invalidate or even simply stay the law for the 2012 election because it cannot be fairly administered, has upheld the law for November.

This will be appealed to the state supreme court but at least one legal observer believes that this decision will stand.  The PA supreme court has six judges, divided evenly between Dems and Rs. (Think Progress is hopefully noncommittal.)

That this law was upheld is likely now to have a domino effect that allows all such efforts to disenfranchise and limit voting for partisan political purposes to go forward.  This monied party takeover that decides who can vote and who can't--which in effect this law does--is a basic threat to American representative democracy.  It's frightening.  It's clearly a step toward dictatorship by the oligarchy, to American fascism.  Pennsylvania gets a taste of it now. 

But though democracy in Pennsylvania is now wounded it is not dead.  A concerted effort must be made to defy the intent of this law by registering the voters it is supposed to disenfranchise, and delivering the votes it is intended to suppress.  It's time for those billionaires and millionaires out there who actually care more about democracy and their country than they do their fortunes to pony up the money necessary to really see to it that all these people get what they need to be able to vote, and get to the polls.  Because make no mistake about it--democracy is under siege in Pennsylvania, and now the only way to break it is to make this attempt to take over the U.S. government futile.

Ironic that this decision comes on a day in which the Romney campaign is trying to inflame political and racial feelings further by concentrating on a Joe Biden line noting that to unchain the banks again would be to put the people back in chains.  It's a metaphor that applies to all.  But go ahead and apply it to people of color who were enslaved--their chains were finally broken when they got the right to vote.  Now look what's happening.  

Media Climate

There are blogs and sites for everything else but when it comes to the transcendent problem of our age, I have yet to find a really good site for climate information.

Some environmental sites include climate but don't follow the topic exclusively or closely.  Enviro organization sites each have their own issues, and rarely follow what other organizations are doing.  The climate advocacy sites are at best action oriented, or so totally into the social media/twittering world that the information content is low.  High content sites tend to be by scientists and for other scientists.

The Think Progress site, Climate Progress, used to be the closest to a first-read if not must-read for news, information and analysis, but increasingly it's becoming an ego trip and vanity site for its manager, Joe Romm.  It used to feature his likeness at the top, the only Think Progress site to do so, but at least that's gone now.  But at the moment the site is so clotted with fawning posts for his new book that it's embarrassing to even visit.  We're used to cable news hosts and bloggers using their shows and blogs to promote their books, but even by today's weak standards, this site is a scandal.  Even worse, it's not surprising.  The site has been trending this way for some time.  It's too bad.  The topic deserves better. 

Poliquips Tuesday

What Romney advisors said to each other in choosing Paul Ryan, according to Lawrence O'Donnell: "Let's grab somebody who stands for something, because we don't."

But Tuesday's goldmine for poliquips came from the Politico piece about how GOPer operatives are near suicidal about the Ryan pick:

"The most cutting criticism of Ryan, shared only by a handful of strategists, is that Ryan isn’t ready to be president — or doesn’t come across as ready. A youthful man who looks even younger than his 42 years, Ryan could end up labeled as Sarah Palin with a PowerPoint presentation, several operatives said."

"Another strategist emailed midway through Romney and Ryan’s first joint event Saturday: “The good news is that this ticket now has a vision. The bad news is that vision is basically just a chart of numbers used to justify policies that are extremely unpopular.”

"This is the day the music died,” one Republican operative involved in 2012 races said after the rollout.

Stop the Attempts to Stop the Vote

Crucial to GOPer election strategy in 2012 is stopping people from voting--mostly minorities and others who usually vote Democratic, but they're willing to lose a few of their own (seniors for instance) as collateral damage.

These efforts were coodinated in states where GOPers had the entire state government, but they are most crucial in the two states where they stole the 2000 and 2004 elections respectively: Florida and Ohio.

And that doesn't even count possible chicanery in vote counting. In Florida in 2000 they purged the registration rolls of thousands of eligible voters and they're trying it again in 2012.  This is not a theory anymore--the former state chairman of the Republican party is saying so in court: GOPers actively sought ways to keep minority citizens from voting.  The U.S. Justice Department has also gone to court with others to challenge Florida voter purges.

The 2004 election turned on Ohio, where on election day lines were several hours long in minority voting districts in the big cities because of not enough voting machines or staff--so long that many left before voting.  That was remedied in 2008 by spreading out the voting over weeks instead of hours.  This year, the Ohio GOPer government wants to roll back early voting, taking away the last weekend before election day.  In 2008, members of black churches went to vote together after services on that Sunday.  The Obama campaign is going to court to restore the full early voting.

But in an even more transparently GOPer political ploy, voting hours have been extended in counties that usually vote GOPer but not in counties with the largest populations, that usually vote Democratic.  The Ohio system has voting hours regulated by county boards comprised of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.  In all counties, Democrats voted to extend voting hours.  But Republicans as a bloc voted for it in all GOPer counties (where it therefore passed unanimously) and against it in all Democratic counties, which resulted in tie votes.  And that tie was broken by Ohio's GOPer secretary of state (the state official in charge of elections) who in every case voted with the local GOPers to restrict hours in Democratic counties--which happen to be the ones with the largest populations, and therefore most in need of extended hours.  

Most of the national attention to this issue so far has been on the many voter ID laws, most recently in the commonwealth of Pennysylvania where the estimated number of voters without the kind of IDs required by the new law is large enough to turn this back into a swing state.  The head GOPer legislator is on record bragging that this law is intended to give the state to Romney.  (And other GOPers are admitting that the very idea of voter ID laws--to allegedly combat the kind of fraud that almost never happens--avoids dealing with the kind that more often does result in fraud, voting by mail--because that's supposed to be how more conservatives vote.)

The Justice Department is investigating whether this law is discriminatory under a seldom used section of the Voting Rights act.  If it proceeds and is successful, it would seemingly apply to other states.  But already the PA law has gone on trial based on the Commonwealth's own constitution, with the state government offering a pitiable defense.  A decision is expected this week. If the PA law is voided or stayed, as it clearly should be, it will send a strong message to other states and other courts that this fundamental American right must be defended.

Already the Ohio secretary of state is feeling heat from his own state's media, and is talking about uniform hours throughout the state (however my bet is that this means no expanded hours anywhere.)  This is a time for courts, the media and the public to step up, to understand that this is a fundamental threat, and stop politicians from stopping the vote simply because they are afraid of the result if they allow free elections in America.

The Bain Drain

"It's the Brain Drain.  His brain's draining."

Help!
A film by Richard Lester, starring the Beatles

There's the complaint--and there's probably a book about it--that the U.S. lost at least a generation of the best and brightest to Wall Street, the big banks and other financial manipulators, because that's where all the action and the big money was.

Back in the 60s, something like this was called the Brain Drain.  I first heard it in connection with European and especially British scientists drawn to America (and so the above quote is appropriately from a British movie directed by an expat American.) Such a brain drain from, say, the higher reaches of politics to more sumptuous occupations might help explain the otherwise baffling ineptitude of the Romney campaign. 

We don't have to reprise the devastating last few months but just the past day or two.  Romney picks Ryan, with more than two weeks until the GOPer convention, which gives the media and the Democrats all that time to dissect and define Ryan with no other distractions.  They make a joint appearance--i.e. photo op--in which Ryan is introduced to the American public wearing a suit coat at least a size too large for him, which appears to be Romney's.  These two guys, with no military service or foreign policy experience, use a decommissioned Navy ship as their backdrop in Virginia, where neither is from (though it is at least a swing state.) 

Then Ryan goes off to an Iowa state fair where he's hit immediately with a question from the crowd on what he's going to do about Medicare, his greatest vulnerability, and he simply refuses to answer.  Meanwhile Romney waffles on his support for the Ryan budget.  But in the dumbest move and the easiest to have anticipated and avoided was Romney's next stop: Florida.  If there is any state of the union where Ryan's attack on the existence of Medicare is going to be a huge issue, it's Florida--and most of the newspapers there immediately headlined that problem.  Just as Romney was in the state.

But that's where Romney went--and wound up cancelling his appearance in Orlando, which should be good territory for him.  With a lame excuse, on which his staff flipflopped.  Then he goes off to Miami for an appearance hosted by a felon convicted of cocaine trafficking--who under Florida law, can't lawfully vote.

Karl Rove, aka Bush's Brain, may still be the evil genius of GOPer politics, but there doesn't seem to be much beyond that.  But the theory that the GOPer brain drain is really a Bain Drain runs up against the fact that the candidate himself is a money guy, and he doesn't seem to be any better or smarter at this than his staff.

On the other hand, there is a large lump of evidence that the Bain Drain is what it's all about.  As the latest fundraising letter from Jim Messina of the Obama campaign says: "Here's the calculation: Mitt Romney doesn't need or expect Paul Ryan to convince even one undecided voter to cast their ballot for him. That's not what he's on the ticket for. He's there to reassure and inspire ultraconservative ideologues and corporate interests that they will have one of their own a heartbeat from the presidency.

That means tens or even hundreds of millions more dollars for the Romney campaign and the array of outside groups supporting him -- and if current trends hold, more than 90 percent of that money will be spent on TV ads -- lying, distorting and trashing Barack Obama. Those ads will have more impact on undecided voters than anything Paul Ryan himself does or says.

Mitt Romney is convinced that picking Paul Ryan is a great investment for him. "

Apart from the obvious utility of this theory in getting Obama donors to give more, it is almost the only theory that makes sense. (Reuters sort of thinks so too.)  Because it suggests that Romney's strategy has not changed.  The only thing he's done well in this campaign so far (as I've pointed out ) is raise tons of money.  He may have begun to feel that as the polls showed him in free-fall,  the well was going to dry up, and the Ryan pick was the pick-me-up his fundraising needed.  That's the investment guy--the Bain Brain's thinking.

So the strategy may remain the same. If it is intact we can expect a nondescript convention speech, a soundbite or two for the debates, and more inept campaigning.  But a thermonuclear onslaught of negative ads that Romney is banking on to make enormous changes at the last minute.

Update: The New York Times and several other news outlets noted that Ryan is particularly well connected to big conservative donors--and to make that point himself, Ryan paid court in Las Vegas Tuesday to crypto-billionaire Sheldon Addledson.

Poliquips Monday

With the selection of Paul Ryan, quipped Howard Fineman on msnbc, "Romney uploaded an identity."

Max Fisher: "Articles about Paul Ryan's foreign policy experience tend to be short..."

Jonathan Bernstein: "...basically I'm not sure how you get less foreign policy and national security experience than Romney/Ryan."

Of Paul Ryan, Rachel Maddow said: "This is not the guy you pick to win Florida.  This is the guy you pick to win Fox & Friends."

Blue Monday

The painting is by Kandinsky, who formed or was part of various groups, several of which had "Blue" in the name.

It's Monday morning and difficult to greet with hysterical laughter, but this may help: I remember reading some of this when it first surfaced in the 80s but somehow it's much funnier now.  In fact I had to stop reading it because I was in danger of laughing myself sick.  Really, it's the funniest thing I've read, line for line, in a long time, maybe ever.  It's a compilation from college freshman essays on history.  It reeks with joy.

The Ryan Choice

Once JFK decided he would name his brother Robert as Attorney-General, clearly the most controversial appointment he would make, he joked that he'd better announce it by appearing on the porch of his house in the middle of the night and whispering, "It's Bobby."

In the middle of a Friday night, the news was leaked that Romney would announce Paul Ryan as his running mate on Saturday morning.  The late Friday leak might mean that the Rabid Right will get a few hours to go crazy with joy before the reporters and the Obama campaign has much to say, since most of the East Coast and Midwest are asleep at this point.  But it's in time for the Sunday shows.

What Dems are paying attention--mostly over at the West Coast-based Daily Kos--are also going crazy with joy.  The chance to definitively pin the Ryan budget and its provisions that would end Medicare on Romney seem to them a magical gift.  I'm not so sure.  The sports press was similarly of one mind about the Dwight Howard trade to the Lakers, which was the week's big personnel move until this.  But Howard--or the other Laker trades of this off-season-- don't seem to address the Lakers' greatest weakness against young teams like the Thunder: speed, that is, the Lakers lack of it.  Howard may be a great defender and an offensive monster down low, but he has to get under the basket first, before the other guys.

That the Ryan pick ensures them victory may be an early Dem chorus, but that outcome alas may not be a guaranteed championship either.  Romney's choice of Ryan addresses two key weaknesses, and maybe three, that are clearly hurting him.  The first, most glaring and most obvious this week is his weakness with the Rabid Right Republican base.  They will be ecstatic, and highly motivated to vote and to seek every partisan advantage until then, including active voter suppression.  It could get--probably will get--very ugly.

Second, Romney has a big problem with specifics--that is, he has no specific proposals, and is incapable of explaining anything.  He's likely to let Ryan explain his "vision for America" and to talk policy details, especially on health care and the deficit.  Ryan will likely offer a healthcare plan that sounds good but isn't Romneycare/Obamacare.  Similarly, he will explain his Medicare proposals in a way that sounds responsible and reassuring.  Or at least he will try. 


He will try to make the deficit a major issue.  It's the one issue that Rs have gotten traction on with Independents in the past.  Implicit in this second weakness is Romey's inability to express policy ideas, which by contrast Ryan does have.

Third, he's likeable, young, and on the national stage he's new.  Dems won't have the same time and money to define him as they did to define Romney.  This is where the Romney money machine goes into overdrive, to control the airwaves.

It is true that this pick shows that Romney is not operating from a position of strength.  But this could be that "game changer," and Dems should not be so confident that this is a gift.  They will have to handle this right.  And they'll have to weather what is likely now to be a bump in the polls for Romney--if not immediately, then after the R convention--which was not likely before this pick.

"Romney-Ryan" has an adman's music to it, as does the sight of the trim darkhaired and totally white twosome, animatronic Batman and Robin-like, on the stage together. Still, Romney may essentially cede the campaign stage to Ryan, much as McCain did to Palin.  And experience has shown that the farther Romney is from the stage, the better it is for him.  The only audience he's been comfortable and successful with is other very rich people.

 But hiding behind Ryan doesn't change his strategy really.  Before this, he was trying to back into the presidency by being the mostly blank alternative to the dread pirate Obama.  Now he's doubled down on that strategy by trying to back into the presidency behind his v.p.

It is true that if the Dems handle this right, they can reach Independents and older voters that may have seemed a stretch before.  And it's also true as some are saying at Kos that this is the clear choice election that the Obama campaign says it is--and that it is the Showdown of the parties.  If Dems are successful, they could be very successful up and down the ticket--and this will mean in particular than congressional Dems and the presidential campaign are tied together as never before. 

In terms of early media response, some of it is apparently going overboard the other way.  I don't see the Ryan pick meaning anything at this point for the states in play--his presence on the ticket means nothing for Wisconsin or Ohio or anywhere.  Its effect won't be known for months.  So I am not by any means saying that this makes Romney the favorite.
 
It probably does mean that what was shaping up to be a very bitter and contentious campaign is going to be even more bitter and contentious.  The Rabid Right knows no bounds, and this is only going to make them more reckless.  My worry is that it ups the possibility of serious violence.  In any case it's going to be a very bumpy ride to November.