Welcome to Romnesia

It was the talk of the political world on Friday--at a rally in Virginia, President Obama rolling out a new riff on Romney and his etch-a-sketchy ways, particularly on women's issues but also on the economy and, well, everything else.

The vid and for the printcentric the quotes are courtesy of Think Progress:


“[H]e’s changing up so much – backtracking and sidestepping. We’ve gotta name this condition that he’s going through, I think it’s called ‘Romnesia,’” Obama announced, referring to Romney’s efforts to abandon the positions he held in the Republican primary in order to appeal to more moderate voters during the general election:

OBAMA: Now, I’m not a medical doctor but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.
If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work – you might have Romnesia. If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care – you might have a case of Romnesia. If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose, but you stand up at a primary debate and said that you’d be “delighted” to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases – man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia. [...]
And if you come down with a case of Romnesia, and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for President, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions.
We can fix you up. We’ve got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease."
 

Apparently the term Romesia has been twittering around for awhile, and has even been in print.  But it's the first time President Obama has used it, and what's interesting about this is how polished it sounds already--suggesting that it's a natural fit for President Obama, who is having fun delivering it.  I think we may be visiting Romnesia for awhile.

Romnesia arrived just in time to echo sentiments showing up in newspaper endorsements, especially in Utah's Salt Lake City Tribune's editorial endorsing President Obama:

[This] is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear, first in his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party’s shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?"

It also reinforces the idea that those who know Romney best--like the citizens of Massachusetts, where he was governor--and Utah, where he managed the Olympics, also like him least. 

But as Andrew Sullivan points out, the other part of his newly refined stump speech is the final argument, the case for re-election:




Chris Matthews has gone back to ethics-free hardball politics in once again seeing Romney as the favorite, so his prescription for what the President must do is lay out a bold vision for an FDR-style second term.

For those of us puzzled by the polls--which by some interpretations are starting to edge back to Obama, though the swing states polls Friday were very mixed--Sullivan also isolates an unbelievable stat, which is that Romney's favorability number has been going up, and is now marginally higher than President Obama's.  If this is so (and it may be as much bullshit as women voters' sudden attraction to Romney), it could be traced to that infamous first debate.  And if that is so--if it is a combination of Romney's energy and Obama's lack of it, that impression would be countered by the second debate, seen by even more viewers.   I just can't believe this new Romney romance (if it exists) will last another 18 days.

President Clinton Thursday kept isolating the main GOPer assumption: "They think we're stupid."   I guess we'll see.

One prediction about the effect of the second debate has come true--the margin by which President Obama won it has increased.  A Gallup poll says he won by 51-38; among Independents it was 54-33.

And something else happened the night of the debate: the next 24 hours constituted the Obama campaign's biggest single fundraising day ever.  Although the total hasn't been released, the previous one-day winner was $50 million in 2008, the day after Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate.  With the big haul in September, it seems that the campaign won't have money problems, and even with the carpet bombing from GOPer billionaire-funded groups, a smart and agile video ad campaign can continue, including a superior ground game, at least in terms of numbers.

Barry's Back

Barry Zito of course.  With their backs against the St. Louis wall, the SF Giants got what brung them: a dominating performance by a starting pitcher.  This has been Zito's year, even with his last brief postseason outing.  He pitched 8 2/3 clutch innings, backed up by clutch fielding and even some hitting. 

It's what's been missing, this Giants trademark of dominant starting pitching, and why they were down to a 3-1 deficit, and in danger of losing it all on the road.  Of course, they did get pitching that was pretty good, if you're hitting, but not lights-out, until Vogelsong in game 2 and now Zito.  And even after more than 100 pitches he was throwing wicked curves in the eighth.  I've never seen balls drop like he threw in that inning.

So they come home, have Vogelsong again and Matt Cain, who is due for a groove.  Just to get back home is a good thing.  Giants baseball.  They've been fun. 

Thursday Recap

The battleground state polls on Thursday continued to show President Obama ahead, except in North Carolina. Romney is moving key staff from North Carolina to Ohio, presumably because they think they've got NC won.  The margin for Obama is thin in Virginia and thinner than before in Colorado, but as people vote and election day gets closer, even 3 point margins start looking big.  One poll had an 8 point margin in Iowa, another a 6 point in Wisconsin.  One even had a 3 point margin in Florida.

The national tracking polls are all basically tied except for Gallup which continues to grow Romney's lead.  Nate Silver sees it as an outlyer, and not inconsistent with Gallup's record of huge (and hugely wrong margins) at this point in 2000 and 2004. 

The internals in one of the state polls--Wisconsin maybe-- suggested that the gender gap is back, big time,with women in favor of President Obama by double digits.  And the poll was taken mostly before the debate.

All the polls on Thursday were taken all or mostly before the debate.  Steve S. at kos says we won't know if there's a debate-related shift until the next debate on Monday. 

I remember hearing about dirty tricks in elections even in the 60s, like the GOPers phoning old people and telling them they can vote by phone, or the age-old tactic of sending voter information to people on the other side with the wrong election date. 

However it does seem to have gotten worse this year, even aside from the blatant voter suppression laws.  It's amazing how open GOPers are about it--especially using their actual public office, their public trust as elected officials of all the people, to mislead voting groups they don't like and discourage them from voting.  This case of a GOP operative caught destroying presumably Dem registrations is probably the tip of the iceberg.   I'm sure it's also being fueled by the amazing amount of raw hate at work in this election.

On Thursday President Obama held a big rally while Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen wowed a crowd in Ohio.  Romney apparently did nothing, with but one event Wednesday.  Both President Obama and Romney told jokes at the Al Smith dinner in New York.  Romney's were mostly aimed at the President, and a few were borderline vicious, as well as not funny.  President Obama mostly made fun of himself, though he got some digs in, too.  And he's much better at it.  The dinner of rich Catholics should be Romney country, but the crowd seemed to warm to the President.   

In the realm of it should be relevant, 68 Nobel Laureates in science signed a letter endorsing President Obama.  “President Obama understands the key role science has played in building a prosperous America,” the laureates wrote in a letter that was released on Wednesday. Mr. Obama “has championed investment in science and technology research that is the engine of our economy.” Plus he's also (shhh, don' tell anybody) won a Nobel Prize.  

Not a good day for the SF Giants, a better one for the Niners.  Farewell Yankees and good riddance.

Notes from The Day After

A few notes on the presidential debate, its possible effects, and the state of the race.

At some point in the days and hours before the debate I dreamt up a line for President Obama to say about the Romney economic plan.  "It's a two part plan," President Obama would say (or maybe, v.p. Biden, Bill Clinton, or even Jon Stewart.) "Part one: smoke.  Part two: mirrors."

President Obama actually did a variation on this, which while not quite as funny, is maybe more to the point:

"Governor Romney doesn’t have a five point plan. He has a one point plan, and that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector, that’s been his philosophy as governor, that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate. You can make a lot of money and pay lower tax rates than someone who makes less. You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and you still make money. That’s exactly the philosophy that we have seen in place for the last decade. That’s what’s been squeezing middle class families, and we have fought back for four years to get out of that mess. The last thing we need to do is to go back to the very same policies that got us there. "

Last night and early the day after, the chatter was about several important moments in the debate.  There was the Libya exchange, when a coldly angry President said he found the charge by Romney and the rabid GOP that he and his administration were playing politics with the Bengazi situation "offensive," and Romney had his Gerald Ford moment with his "gotcha" that got only him:



Also about President Obama's closing, in which he took the opportunity Romney presented him in his closing when he mentioned his concern for "the 100%" to skewer Romney on his "47%" comments:



But apart from deconstructing the new batch of Romney lies (which he added to old ones he repeated), the talk on Wednesday was about women's issues that came up in the debate: contraception, abortion, equal pay, etc., which got folded into the viral soundbite of Romney's "binders full of women."



This went viral for the telling awkwardness of the phrase, but went really big when it was revealed to be another lie--it wasn't Romney but an independent group that supplied the names of qualified women that would have been presented to whoever won as governor that year.

But President Obama hammered at Romney on women's issues at his campaign events, including to 2,000 students at a college in Iowa and a huge crowd in Athens, Ohio.  And with good reason, for a survey of women in swing states shows that abortion is far and away at the top of the list of issues they are most concerned about--39% vs. 19% for jobs.

 

Women probably will determine the winner of this election.  But by all accounts, Romney's answers on immigration further alienated him from Latino voters, and may well have made them more determined to vote for Obama. 

So...what about the impact of the debate?  The first poll after the instant polls last night show the perception growing that President Obama won the debate.  Preliminary figures suggest the audience for the debate was larger than for the first debate--possibly the largest in history.  And don't forget what I mentioned yesterday before the debate that Nate Silver noted: second debates move poll numbers just as much as first debates do, historically.  So despite the pundits sort of doubting the poll numbers will now move...I'm saying the poll numbers will start moving, especially in the swing states.

As for current poll numbers, the latest Ohio poll shows a slight increase for President Obama already.  And on the worst poll of the day--the national Gallup tracking poll--kos took a look at the crosstabs and found that Obama is actually ahead in every region of the country except the south.  Obama is ahead in the East and the Midwest 52-48, and in the West by 53-47.  He's fallen further behind in the South--39% to Romney's 61%.  These are mostly states Romney was going to win anyway.

In any case, we're probably at or near the nadir.  Tracking polls will start to pick up some post-debate sentiment.  By next week the swing state polls should reflect post-debate.  Even at Romney's high point, Obama remained ahead in Ohio especially, but also in other swing states, though more narrowly than before. In Ohio, he's banked a lot of votes--early voters.

 There was one disturbing report on Wednesday speculating that the Obama campaign has given up on Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, and maybe Colorado, because they didn't mention they felt confident about them as they do about Ohio, Iowa and Nevada. I don't buy it. Maybe in another ten days, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that they shifted advertising from N.C. or even Florida--though they have well-prepared ground games in both states they are not going to abandon.  But I don't see them ever giving up on Virginia or Colorado. 

photo: Obama in Ohio on Wednesday

What about the external reality?  And that last jobs report the Friday before election day?  When Obama was polling higher, the economic numbers were worse, and they didn't hurt him.  Couple that with some upbeat economic news: Retail sales are up, and the housing market is improving faster than experts anticipated.  So it seems unlikely that a much worse economy will determine the outcome.

The basic question really is whether Romney can lie his way into the White House.  The American people unfortunately have proven susceptible to lies--both Bushes for example proved that.  All any of us can do is be as clear as possible about the truth.  Fight the good fight.  And enjoy the good fight.

Debate Reaction: He Delivered

Taegan Goddard Political Wire:

"Obama won the debate decisively.

The president had a simple formula: Defend and explain his record while insisting that Romney wasn't being truthful. He kept Romney on the defensive and came prepared with counter-punches to nearly every topic. It was devastatingly effective.

The memorandum of understanding setting the rules for the debate -- and the town hall format itself -- went out the window pretty quickly. The debate turned confrontational within the first 20 minutes which probably pleased partisans. Both sides saw fire in their candidate. But it's more likely that undecided voters didn't like the confrontation at all.

In particular, Romney doesn't do testy well. He made a big mistake trying to roll over the moderator. He got away with it in the first debate but he looked mean tonight. His obsession with the rules also came off as petty.

Romney was most effective when pointing out what Obama promised and what actually happened over the last four years. He scored many points But he lost most of them by not knowing his facts on what President Obama said the morning after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Obama acted like a president in the exchange while Romney was much less. It was Romney's Gerald Ford moment."

The excitable Andrew Sullivan:

"To my mind, Obama dominated Romney tonight in every single way: in substance, manner, style, and personal appeal. He came back like a lethal, but restrained predator. He was able to defend his own record, think swiftly on his feet, and his Benghazi answer was superb. He behaved luke a president. He owned the presidency. And Romney? Well, he has no answers on the math question and was exposed. He was vulnerable on every social issue, especially immigration. And he had no real answer to the question of how he'd be different than George W Bush.

I'm excitable - but sometimes politics is about emotion as well as reason. And my view is that Obama halted Romney's momentum in its tracks and his performance will bring women voters in particular flooding back. He's just more persuasive. On watching with the sound off - apart from weird gaps in the CSPAN coverage - Obama did not grin like Biden; he smiled confidently, leaning forward. Within twenty minutes, Romney looked flush and a little schvitzy.

Game, set and match to Obama. He got it; he fought back; he gave us all more than ample reason to carry on the fight."

Alex Altman at Swampland (Time Magazine blog):

"With his presidency on the line, Barack Obama delivered a forceful performance in the second presidential debate Tuesday night, chiding Mitt Romney for failing to provide specifics about his policies and painting the Republican nominee as a more conservative version of George W. Bush."

For Obama, however, it was a performance brimming with the kind of fiery rhetoric his supporters were craving. The President has described himself in the past as a “fourth quarter player.” In crunch time of his last campaign, he sank a very big shot Tuesday night."

CBS instant poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 37%  Romney 30%
PPP Colorado Obama 48  Romney 44   Among Independents:  Obama 58  Romney 36
CNN  Obama 46  Romney 39

Huffington Post headline: BARACK IS BACK


Josh Marshall:

"Romney did well. Obama did better. And increasingly better over the course of the evening. I said earlier this evening that a candidate always has to be really careful getting into fights or going on the attack in a Townhall format. But I think Obama pulled it off. In fact, he managed to effectively balance an unwieldy mix of goals he brought into the debate. Be tough. Be presidential. Connect with the audience. Reengage supporters. Push an effective critique of Mitt Romney. Over the course of 90 minutes the cadence of tension and body language and power slowly arched in Obama’s favor.

I think he made a strong case for persuadable voters... With tonight’s performance, Obama changed that equation dramatically."

From TV I can only paraphrase.  Howard Fineman said that Romney's lack of credibility on the issues was exposed.  Rachel Maddow called it a decisive win for President Obama.  Steve Schmidt complimented Romney's performance but said he screwed up on specific issues, and believes the modest win the first polls are giving Obama will turn into a bigger win as the week goes on.

The moments being talked about: Romney on immigration.  The President's strong answer on Bengazi followed by Romney's attempted gotcha moment on whether President Obama called the Bengazi attack an act of terrorism in his Rose Garden remarks the next day--which readers of this blog know he did, and moderator Candy Crowley also knew he did, and a double Romney smackdown.  On this one of the many wiseass live bloggers noted:

"Obama clearly prepared for his Libya response. Romney makes a dumb mistake: Obama says he spoke in the Rose Garden after the attack and called it an act of terror. Romney says "no you didn't." Obama says "get the transcript." Crowley says "he did." THE AUDIENCE APPLAUDS CROWLEY LIVE FACT-CHECKING ROMNEY. Like, twice. They applaud twice. Romney stutters through the rest of his response, and it doesn't matter what he says: He just got fucking destroyed. By the audience, basically."

And some gleeful twittering on Romney's phrase "a binder full of women."

Reuters is calling the Libya confrontation a smackdown moment for Obama, after which "Romney appeared stunned."

The Guardian (UK): "Barack Obama secured the comeback he desperately needed in the second presidential debate against Mitt Romney, finishing the night on top after a series of fierce clashes in which the two made no attempt to hide the extent of their personal hostility."

Jonathan Chiat at New York Magazine:

"Obama came into this debate having formulated a simple frame for his opponent: Romney believes that people like himself can play by different rules. Into this frame he shoved Romney’s business career, personal income tax rate, and his public policy. And on the very last question, he attacked Romney for his infamous 47% comments – not as fiercely as he could have, but well enough. At times, Romney appeared complicit in Obama’s strategy. Tonally, he seemed nastier, and more like the plutocrat Obama painted him as.

Romney’s message against Obama was that the economy has been bad, something everybody already knows. Obama’s message against Romney is that his opponent is a wealthy, self-interested Republican fully invested in his party’s platform. That’s something that not everybody believed after the first debate."

Dem pollster Stan Greenberg:

"I thought Obama made the determination from the first second to be forward-looking — laying out each element of his economic plan. He repeatedly said, this is what I want to accomplish in a second term. While he clearly sounded confident about what he had done, he didn’t say, give me a second term because of a job well done. He repeatedly said , I would like another term to do this or that — on energy, education and others. I think voters will feel they heard him talking about the changes and progress he wants to achieve."

kos notes this about the debate audience, chosen because they're undecideds (which might account for the fact that there was only one black person):

"After the debate, audience members mobbed President Barack Obama while Mitt Romney was surrounded by just his family. He didn't last long, out of the hall as fast as he could. He has a hard time being around carbon-based life forms, you know?  On the other hand, Obama stuck around 10-15 minutes signing autographs and taking pictures. We saw our real president tonight, and we also saw the real dick Romney. The contrast couldn't be clearer."

Pre-Debate Tuesday

       Will he deliver?

late afternoon update: Tuesday's polls are even weirder than yesterday's but good news for Ohio--the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the GOPer state gov's appeal on early voting, so the final weekend of early voting must happen, or GOPer officials face contempt of court or worse.  Nate Silver notes that the stats show the second debate is potentially just as important as the first in moving poll numbers.  Not that there's any pressure or anything.

After the ABC/Washington Post poll, the many polls issued Monday offered a very mixed bag.  Poll guru Nate Silver essentially threw up his hands and couldn't say what was going on.  Though he upped President Obama's chances for reelection fractionally from yesterday, to about 2 in 3.

Looking at the bright side, several observers agree with Steve S. at DKos:

With about three weeks until election day, and 43 polls in the hopper from this weekend and Monday, we can draw a few very tenuous conclusions about the state of play in the 2012 election cycle: The presidential race has moved clearly back into a very competitive position, although President Obama may have finally stalled the Romney momentum on the polling front over this weekend. Conversely, the GOP's fortunes on the Senate front seem to be getting worse, with it now looking just as likely that the Democrats will gain seats in the upper chamber than they are to lose the Senate altogether.

Adding to the confusion are the polls that show a 4 or 5 point edge for Romney in the swing states, and a 5 point edge for President Obama. 

But here's some news from Florida on absentee and early voting: absentee vote requests, which were dominated by Republicans in 2008 when Obama won the state, are now nearly even, with Dems just a few percentage points down. “It’s not good news for Republicans,” said Brad Gomez, a political science professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee, who studies voter turnout....The Obama campaign has 102 offices, up from 58 in Florida four years ago, and has registered about 320,000 new voters, up from about 200,000 in 2008. Republicans have signed up about 49,000 new voters in Florida, state data show, and have 47 offices for the presidential campaign.

And even those most invested in the "dead heat" thesis are reluctant to conclude that Obama is losing Ohio, even with the extreme barrage of Romney TV ads in that state.  And events like this won't help the Romneyryan ticket: of Ryan's attempted photo op of compassionately helping the poor, the Washington Post reported: "The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall...."

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned.

Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty."

That this appeared in the Washington Post made for an amusing story for the politically knowing.  But it's the Ohio newspapers--like this one--that are significant in telling this story:

Juanita Sherba, St. Vincent’s Saturday coordinator for the dining hall, said she gave the Ryan campaign approval that day for the visit by the candidate and his family. Sherba say she now realizes it wasn’t her call to make.

The event “was a photo op,” she said. “It was the phoniest piece of baloney I’ve ever been associated with. In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door.”

When an advance person from the Mitt Romney/Ryan campaign asked about the visit, Sherba said it took her by surprise. “I didn’t know it was my place to say ‘no,’” she said. “I made a mistake.” The event was completely staged by the campaign, she said.

“They couldn’t have cared less,” Sherba said. “The advance man said Paul Ryan wanted to come and talk to our clientele, but he didn’t.”

  People in that part of the world (generally speaking, my original part of the world) do not like phony, and Romneyryan already has a big problem with phony.  With any luck, that will become abundantly clear tonight.

As for the all-important debate strategy, Andy Borowitz reveals:

With his polite and well-mannered performance widely panned in the first Presidential debate, President Barack Obama is under mounting pressure to prove that he can act like an asshole in the second debate tomorrow night, a campaign aide confirmed. “In America, we demand that our President remain cool and calm in a crisis but go batshit in a debate,” the aide said. “Tuesday night is all about that second piece.”

However, success is not assured:

But even as Mr. Obama worked around the clock to practice being a douche, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, doubted his efforts would succeed. “Being an asshole isn’t a skill that you can just pick up overnight,” Mr. Rhoades said. “Mitt Romney’s been working on it all his life.”

Forward Monday

phone-banking in Virginia Sunday, a break from debate prep

ABC/Washington Post poll
nationally, likely voters:  Obama 49  Romney 46
nationally, registered voters: Obama 50  Romney 43
swing states likely voters:  Obama 51  Romney 46

More voters say the country is on the right track than in any poll of the last three years.
President Obama leads in most personal qualities and on most issues--pretty much the same as in polls just before the first debate. 

New York Magazine surveyed Washington campaign professionals--37 from each party--on their true views of the upcoming election.  82% believe President Obama will win re-election.  The margin named by most was 2%.  A majority also believe he will be a better President in every way, on every issue.

Yes We Can

The extent of new information I can find on Friday's shooting into an Obama field office in Denver is that police are investigating surveillance video.

But while the stories on this tend to be very short, the above photo has emerged that appears to be the first one in time after the shooting that I've so far seen. 

Whoever did this--if ever found--this photo is a reminder of the virulence and even hate that is coming to a head in this election.  There is so much racial hatred by GOPers being reported every day that it's almost overwhelming.  Add to that the news of bosses telling their employees they could lose their jobs if they vote for Obama.  Plus the overt and covert voter suppression tactics, the sudden avalanche of TV ads in the swing states paid for by Romney's buds in the 1%.

But Yes We Can has not been shattered.  The stakes are too high.  We can't let them steal the future. We go forward.

Forward

Sunday Updates

President Obama leads in early voting  59% to 31%

Swing state polls:

Colorado: Obama 48  Romney 46 (Gravis)
Florida:  Romney 49  Obama 48 (PPP) 

Saturday Swing state polls:

PPP Ohio poll: President Obama 51  Romney 46
Arizona: Obama 44 Romney 42  (This is supposed to be safe for Romney)

The Obama campaign reports:
4 million donors--that's one out of every 75 Americans

The Obama campaign so far has registered:
More than 40,000 voters in both PA and Colorado
More than 60,000 voters in Florida
More than 75,000 voters in North Carolina

Nearly 800 field offices open; Romney has fewer than 300.



And joining the Obama team: The Boss.  Bruce Springsteen will campaign for Obama in Ohio and Iowa, alongside Bill Clinton.

Just One Little Bullet Doesn't Matter, Right?

A gun shot was fired, apparently from a vehicle, into a field office where Obama volunteers were making phone calls on Friday, and today--as the Denver Post says--the silence is deafening.

Of course it is Colorado, where apparently gunfire isn't news unless it kills people, causes a debilitating injury to a sitting U.S. Member of Congress, or kills, maims terrorizes teenagers in a high school or at a Batman movie.

But gunfire in a presidential campaign should be a very serious story.  We ignore it at our peril.  There are plenty of examples in European history of the danger of such actions, and particularly the danger of dismissing or ignoring them.

Saturday the Denver Post followup begins: "Amid the fierce noise of a presidential campaign, the silence from all parties was deafening Saturday as police continued to investigate a suspected gunshot into the Obama field office near downtown Denver."   

And the story provides no further information that wasn't in Friday's brief story, partly because nobody (police, political parties, etc.) is talking.  But I wonder if it is also because not enough people are asking.

A shot fired into a political office would have been a scandal in Denver in 1892, but apparently not in 2012.  What kind of a country are we becoming?

Gun Shot into Obama Campaign Office

It's not a major news story yet, but shouldn't it be?  On Friday afternoon a bullet shattered a window of an Obama field office in Denver.  There were people working in the office at the time.  No one was reported injured.

As of early Saturday morning there are few details, and apparently little interest in obtaining them.  Here's the Denver Post story.  Nobody else seems to have any more.

The Week in Numbers

So it's been a week since the first debate and the unemployment numbers.  As I ventured in the previous post, the Romney surge in the polls tracks in time with the post-debate consensus, though te poli sci folks don't all agree that's entirely the reason--Romney's numbers started to move up even before that, and the surge seems to be coming from disenchanted GOPers, but more than that as well.  The better than expected unemployment number does not seem to have translated into a counter-wave, so it may take the next debate to change the trajectory in a clear way. 

But apparently President Obama has not held his national lead, though all the polls are within one or two points and several are tied.  Gallup's latest tracking has Romney up 2 points with likely voters, but Obama up by one among registered voters.  So for Obama partisans--and anybody not interested in seeing this country fall apart under rampant injustice etc.--it remains tense. But Romney has not followed up his debate with flawlessness on the campaign trail--he and Ryan continue to provide copious ammunition.  With the second debate on Tuesday, who knows where we will be a week from now. 

Though the state polls were more dour on Friday, it is possible to find a few that are moving back towards Obama.  The Dish plots a trend line in Obama's favor in Virginia.  The latest Florida numbers are worrisome--although I never counted on Florida because of the mischief the GOPers have successfully sowed into the voting process there.  It's worse than Ohio.  The latest polls in Ohio suggest a much tighter race, but I notice that the pros are generally skeptical that Romney is going to be able to pull that one off.  Still, Nate Silver is as unbearish on an Obama victory as he has been in months, noting the fragile state leads.  He pegs Obama's chances all the way down to 61%.

Which leads to the overall electoral college evaluations at this point.  At Daily Kos, Singiser   notes that strictly working with poll numbers the race has become uncertain, though still fundamentally favoring President Obama:

"Taken at their current face value, that would put Obama at 281 electoral votes, and Romney at 257 electoral votes. However, it is not difficult to see how a very small further shift in the electorate could both elevate Romney to the presidency, or consign him to the ash heap. With just a shift of two percentage points in his direction, Romney would gain both Nevada and Ohio, that would push him to 281 electoral votes, and with it, the White House. However, if there is a shift of just 2 points in the president's direction, he gets back a raft of states (Colorado, Florida and Virginia). That would put him at 332 electoral votes, making him a decisive winner for a second term."

But what if you take other factors into consideration?  My old boss (sort of) Paul Solman interviewed economist David Rothchild for PBS--he tracks polling but also economic trends and the predictions market, which has a pretty good track record.  He sees Obama as a heavy favorite, and notes the rationale:

"What I would say is that a state like Ohio has maintained its Obama friendliness but as it gets closer and closer to Election Day, it becomes more and more likely that it will actually vote for Obama come Election Day. So it's not a shifting of opinion as much as it's saying, "Romney is running out of time to shift that opinion." And as that happens, you see very few states cross each other, in essence, and so that ranking holds...

So take that order, start adding up electoral votes until you hit 270. You're going to find a pivot state: a state that if Obama holds he wins and that if Romney can reach he wins, and that state has been Ohio for virtually the entire election cycle. It means that if Romney can get all the states up to that point, he can win this election. But that includes Florida and Virginia on top of Ohio and those are three big hurdles and that means on the flip [side] that all Obama has had to do is hold one of those states. Just one of those main three states, and that's what's been giving him that edge this entire time."

Of course these aren't all the factors--there's the ground game, voter suppression, the weather, etc.  All kinds of things that figure into a close election, if it is that close.  So come election night, if  Obama wins Virginia and North Carolina, it will start to look like a landslide.  But even if he loses both of those and Florida, it will probably still come down to Ohio and secondarily to Iowa.  But even in what now looks like a blowout in 2008, the returns from those eastern states were a long time coming, and it was pretty close to the end (when the Pacific states came in) that the results from Florida and Ohio were known.  Great.  And there's still three weeks + to go even before we get to that long night.

But I also noted that Rothschild stressed economic trend factors, and that the predictions market was on top of the data.  And it was reported that consumer confidence jumped unexpectedly higher. What that means may not be known until the election returns.

 It would be great to see another big move towards Obama to ease the tension these last weeks.  It's possible. Already since the vp debate, it's becoming more accepted that Biden won it. (An Ipso poll out Friday said so.)  Dems and pundits are finding more and more in the debate that works for Obama, if carried on.  No polls yet reflect any influence from the debate--it would be unusual if there were any (but let's fact it--this has been an unusual year.)  One thing is certain:  Biden has injected more energy going into this weekend.

Joltin Joe

Joe has jolted Dems out of their torpor.  But the anxiety remains and it has a real basis.

It is convenient to blame the rise of Romney in the polls to President Obama's first debate performance, but while that's probably been a big factor, the even more depressing possibility is that Romney's mendacity is becoming effective.

That's the real nightmare here: that voters are believing Romney's lies.  Joe Biden called the Romneyryans on it last night, which has cheered Dems and while GOPers go on about the Biden affect, the Biden effect may be to highlight the lies.

There's been pushback today on Romneyryan's fuzzy math.  A prominent GOPer economist admits that the Romney tax cut numbers just don't add up.  An analyst goes one by one through the "six studies" Ryan said support their plan, to show that none of them does.

But this is the dull fear we feel, scarred by years when GOPers got away with systematic lies that damaged the future, killed and maimed people, etc.  With a Romneyryan victory we're headed for a dire future, something out of Soylent Green crossed with Hunger Games and A Handmaid's Tale.

So we're happy that Joe Biden called out the lies.  President Obama is doing so on the stump, and we can look forward to him doing so in Tuesday's debate. But if and until the poll numbers start to turn back, some of us aren't going to be sleeping very well.  We've been through this nightmare before.

But Joe Biden did something else last night that hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet: he went away the GOPer Congress for obstructing progress towards accelerating the recovery and providing jobs as well as much needed infrastructure and public servant (police, fire, teachers) support.

That's an October move that could be resonant.  Another is the Supreme Court.  Joe hit this one too and it must be repeated often: Roe v. Wade plus a host of other issues are in the balance, depending on who gets to appoint the Justices in the next four years.

Victorious Thursday

The post-debate analysis is a little wiggly, what with the guidance from instant polls being mixed and CNN steadfastly holding to a draw.  The CBS poll of undecided voters however was pretty clear: Joe Biden won.  50% said so, while another 20% thought it was a draw, and 30% Ryan.

But the Dem bloggers and pundits are happy, not to say joyous, and it's clear why: Joe took it to Romneyryan with authority.  All the noise about smiling and interrupting, and how that might affect undecided voters--well, the CBS poll tells you.  They saw it for what it was: Biden reacting to Ryan's lies, obfuscations and confusions.

Joe hit the main marks hard: Medicare especially, but also women's rights.  Right now it's all about women in Ohio.  As a bonus, he showed how dangerously vacuous the GOPer ticket is on foreign policy.  Plus he pushed Romneyryan back hard right on Social Security, Roe v. Wade, etc.

What everybody noticed is that this was the performance the Dems needed to renew their enthusiasm and self-belief, let alone self confidence.  It will mean a lot.

President Obama earlier made a fiery speech in Florida, which bodes well for the next debate, not even a week away.

I'm not linking much this time because for some reason my Internet connection is incredibly slow.

But I can't leave without saying a word about those SF Giants.  Buster grand slam!  Matt Cain!  Hanging on to become the first NL team to win this series with 3 straight victories on the road.  The A's couldn't master Verlander, though.  And the Orioles and Washington have victories to remember regardless of what happens tomorrow. 

Joe's Show

It's Joe' Show on Thursday for the vp debate.  Rumors that it's really going to be Bill Clinton wearing a Biden Halloween mask are probably exaggerated.  But it's Joe's job to steady the ship until the Obama mounts his comeback in successive weeks.

The first presidential debate yielded a Romney victory that people are apparently still talking about, but as Rachel Maddow pointed out, not a single soundbite for either candidate, except for the Big Bird moment.  Chances are there will be soundbite moments Thursday, now that everybody realizes that theatrics sell in the twitterverse.

Free advice is usually worth what you pay for it, and Joe's getting plenty (some of it probably well-paid actually) but the temptation to dwell too much in the ghostly land between Ryan and Romney's positions on things might better be avoided, in favor of hammering on women's issues and Medicare. 

More polls Wednesday, same basic results.  The swing state polls show Obama still ahead but by smaller margins.  The national polls are tilting Romney or tied.  Everything seems awfully close to the margin of error.  Is anybody else dreading that this comes down to the jobs report on the Friday before election weekend?

Elsewhere, after losing their home games the Bay teams evened their series' on the road.  I'm not much of an Oakland fan (I retain a sentimental attachment to Jim Leyland the former Bucs skipper in Detroit) but the Giants are endlessly entertaining.  Their bats finally came alive, but their starting pitching--their usual strongest point--continues to struggle.  And then comes the starter who got left out of the rotation, to become the hero with five strong innings in relief, Tim Lincecum.  So the way the story should go is that the Giants get what they haven't gotten for 4 games: a dominant starting pitcher, and despite recent rocky outings Matt Cain is a pretty good candidate.    

Low Profile Tuesday

Tuesday the Romney bounce continued to show up in polls, though not enough so far to overcome President Obama's lead in key swing states, especially Ohio.  Amidst Dem angst, several polling experts and poly sci types advised patience, as President Obama is still favored (a 70% favorite by oddsmakers and the NYT guy.)

On the bright side, the SF Giants stayed alive in the playoffs, leading to this odd description leading the  AP  account: "Joaquin Arias hit a grounder toward third base and took off toward third, covering those 90 feet in a blink as a full-to-capacity ballpark went silent with angst."   If Arias actually had taken off toward third, it would be Giant fans with the angst (there's that word again.)  And here's a neat story about Hunter Pence's pregame pep talk and game heroics.

Meanwhile, there's also the ongoing Doonesbury strips on Mitt Romney.  My favorite so far.

 

And since the Sesame Street people are trying to keep Big Bird out of politics, this may be my only opportunity to show this.

Music Break for Blue Monday

From a 1987 benefit in the UK, George Harrison and Eric Clapton with a lot of other all-stars including Ringo, Elton John and Phil Collins on Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

Blue Monday

The polls taken last week just after the debate are starting to show up now, and they are very bad.  The Pew poll showing Romney with a 4 point national lead is particularly horrifying.  But apparently most of that was also done on those two days.  The unanimous pundit judgment on the debate is reflected in these polls.

However several online sources I checked today say that the polling for President Obama rebounded over the weekend.  That won't be expressed in new polls for a few days.  The danger here is that because the polls have this time lag, a certain new narrative starts to set in.  And there are certain alarmists on cable and on the Internet who are susceptible. 

The lasting effect is apt to be higher enthusiasm among Romney supporters than there was before the debate.  The Romney campaign is also apparently starting to unleash its big money in ads.  As I speculated, they seem to have been marshaling forces for an October push.  The question is whether it's enough to erase everything that's come before.

A good Biden performance in the v.p. debate this week will help, but it will need to be President Obama in the two remaining presidential debates who will have to reassure voters that their pre-debate estimations were the correct ones.

In good news,  Democratic Senate candidates are doing well in Massachusetts, Virginia, Connecticut and Wisconsin, all tight races.  But I would like to see President Obama hold one big rally in Boston in late October to seal the deal for Elizabeth Warren.

Music Break

George Harrison and Bob Dylan during a soundcheck for the Bangladesh benefit concert in 1971 perform "If Not For You," a Dylan composition which each had recorded separately, though it's the Harrison version that became the best known, and the standard for future versions by others.  Anyway, it's a great song for the weekend.

Pivot

President Obama's response to his debate performance was immediate.  At his first campaign rallies he was energized, focused, commanding, funny and incisive.  He attacked Romney for his manifest lies, and for his many contradictions. 

And the crowds were there for him.  12,000 in Denver, and 30,000 in Madison, Wisconsin.  Preliminary fundraising numbers suggest that the Obama campaign brought in more than $150 million in September, a record for this campaign by anyone.  Update: The final figures for Sept. indicate $181 million.  Also in September, the Obama campaign passed 10 million total donors in 2012.

The news cycles since Wednesday changed topics rapidly.  At first the Romney debate win.  Then pretty quickly, the Romney lies.  He lied about his tax plan.  He lied about the number of green companies that got federal support and went under (he said half.  It's less than 1%.)  He lied about how wonderfully bipartisan he was as gov of MA.  Above all he lied about what his own healthcare plan provides.  It does not in any way stop insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions.  Paul Krugman called it a sick joke.

But what seems to be lasting from the debate was a single line by Romney that he probably meant as a sop to conservatives (who were otherwise getting shafted by his apparent etch-a-sketch position changes) and a mild attempt to show himself as a tough administrator: he vowed to not only end Obamacare, but to shut down PBS.  He specifically mentioned Big Bird.

The debate got a huge audience and a record number of tweets--more on Big Bird than any other moment.  And that's what has lasted.  Not only in the outrage of people like LeVar Burton that Romney would target programs that help children learn to read for a miniscule savings in the federal budget, or even by frightening children themselves, but by providing President Obama with a very effective campaign riff.  Romney refuses to reign in Wall Street, he said, but he wants to destroy Sesame Street.

Then came the big news of the September jobs report on Friday.  It would be big news only if it were very bad or very good.  It was very good.  The unemployment rate went from 8.1 to 7.8, which is the big headline.  But the report also shows that the economy was growing faster during the summer than previous reports suggested, as new jobs totals for the previous two months were revised sharply upward.

This good news for the American economy was greeted by Republicans with denial, and with suggestions that the Obama administration had fixed the numbers--precisely the most damaging response they could make, because it showed that they found an improving American economy disappointing--they would rather than more people unemployed.

But then this is fairly typical of how GOPers blow their victories with arrogance.  Their response the day after the debate was not to praise Romney but to deride the President in obviously racist terms.  Romney campaign co-chair Sununu said it showed that Obama is "lazy" among other slurs.

Meanwhile, in his effort to turn his aggressive debate perform into working class votes, Mitt Romney spoke again in coal country, on the day that more came out about his coal company appearance in August--not only were miners forced to attend his speech during their shift but without pay, they are coerced into contributing to Romney's campaign.  This story might not make waves in the national press, but I can guarantee that every worker in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. who hears about it won't like it one bit.

Speaking of Ohio, another victory there against voter suppression: a federal court required that Ohio restore its final weekend early voting for all its citizens.   The Ohio GOPer state government responded as PA's has done, by dragging its feet in implementation.  But the fact remains that the courts have restored all the voting rights in Ohio the GOPers tried to take away.

As for the permanent damage of the first debate, the jury is out and will be for at least a week.  The first polls that take the debate into consideration don't show much if any damage to Obama, though Romney may have gotten a boost.  Ordinarily, the first polls out next week would say more.  But now with the jobs report changing the narrative already, it's not clear how long Romney's gains, if any, would hold.  But if next week's polls show President Obama maintaining a clear lead, it probably shows what many professionals suggested even before the debate: they don't move the numbers all that much.

The Happy Liar

Update: In his column titled "Romney's Successful Debate Plan: Lying" Jonathan Chiat noted: "Romney won the debate in no small part because he adopted a policy of simply lying about his policies. Probably the best way to understand Obama’s listless performance is that he was prepared to debate the claims Romney has been making for the entire campaign, and Romney switched up and started making different and utterly bogus ones."

First Read adds: "If Romney won the instant reactions from last night’s debate, it is more than possible that the Obama camp can win the next 24 hours. Why? Because Romney said several things that could make life difficult for him today or in the next debate."

The media consensus is that Mitt Romney decisively won the first presidential debate on style points and that President Obama lost it.  That's going to drive a real frenzy of coverage over the next few days.  Perhaps it will even overwhelm the fact-checking, which will show that time after time, Romney brazenly and breezily lied--about his own proposals and about the President's. 

Within the debate's first minutes, Romney lied about his signature tax proposal, to cut taxes for the wealthy.  It was only the first of a number of etch-a-sketch moments, running away from his rabid right proposals and blithely and aggressively selling deceptions.  Unfortunately, too many of his worst lies, especially about President Obama's proposals and record, went unanswered.

But even the insta-poll showing that viewers overwhelmingly named Romney the winner also showed that his favorables did not increase, and that President Obama was rated even higher on caring about people's needs and problems.  While the clear consensus was that Romney won, there was no consensus on its effect on the race. 

It was disappointing because President Obama might have put Romney away for good with a sharp performance tonight.  It will take longer for Romney's lies to be exposed.  So now we know this race is likely to get more intense.  And we know how persuasive a liar Romney can be-- a more dangerous man than we thought.

Though it was a consensus judgment, it wasn't unanimous.  Some professional viewers just thought it was pretty boring.   Leading that chorus was Andy Borowitz:

DENVER (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans lost consciousness on Wednesday night between the hours of 9 and 10:30 P.M. E.T., according to widespread anecdotal reports from coast to coast.

The sudden epidemic of sleepiness prevented voters from watching more than a minute or two of the first Presidential debate between former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, which the few observers who remained awake have called the most tedious in American history.

The Long Game

The first 2012 presidential debate begins in under an hour. Some of the people (or all of the people some of the time) will watch for the information on policy, some will be eager for "moments," their twitter-fingers twitching. But probably for most it's the general impression, based a little on everything (when they switch back from the ball game), that becomes most meaningful.

Because there are lots of deciders and decisions: who do I vote for? Do I vote at all? Am I confident in who I am voting for? Am I voting for the winner? Etc. It should remind us that it's more than a game. There were people waking up today realizing that their Medicaid protection, should they need it, might be gone if Romney prevails.

But yes, this is now a ritual. But it's 90 minutes of unscripted ritual, in which parts may be scripted but the whole is not. Improv.

I believe President Obama sees this as an opportunity to communicate with the American people on what he has done and what he plans to do as President.  He plays a long game, and he's more than suggested that he will be using whatever means become available to communicate and generate public support in his second term for the policies he pursues.  Of course he knows that he must deal with getting reelected, but he knows that contrasting his agenda and his understanding of the realities the country faces with Romney's is also a way of clarifying and communicating what he wants to accomplish.  He'll have an audience, and that process begins tonight.  

Debate Prep

Tons of ultimately meaningless crud has been said and written about tonight's presidential debate.  Stats and quotes from past debates (tell us nothing.  We're in Twitterverse now.  It's all up for grabs.)  Lots of unsolicited advice about what each candidate must do/should do (the most clueless of which seems to be coming from Romney's advisers, but then they're auditioning for their next job.)

A new NBC poll shows again how damaging the 47% remarks are to Romney, and everything is now being measured against them--his proposals, his taxes, his every word.  But that poll also shows that less than half of registered voters claim that the debates will have much to do with how they vote.

There are three aspects to the debates: the facts and policies the candidates talk about, the moments that get seized upon and go viral, and the overall impression that potential voters come away with.  Only the last factor really matters, and they are dependent at least a bit more on the first than the second (although seasoned pols agree that general demeanor as conveyed by the cameras counts a lot.)  Like Romney's 47% riff, a memorable moment usually feeds and supports an existing narrative or sums up a performance, though in rare cases it's a surprise, one way or another.

But there I go, adding to the noise.  Romney is going to have trouble getting away with his fact-challenged statements--he's got two people on stage that aren't going to let too many of them go by.  And he does have a problem with facts, not only his blatant lies, but his grasp of them.

Take for example his statement on the temporary ban on deporting children of illegal immigrants that President Obama ordered.  His clumsy attempt to say, well, okay, me too, got it basically wrong. Lawrence Downes in the NY Times: "To the things we already knew or suspected about Mitt Romney and his views on immigration – that he is a hard-liner prone to pandering, a bearer of platitudes, seemingly allergic to clarity or specifics – we now must add a disturbing new possibility: that he has no idea what he is talking about."   Romney talked about visas, when visas aren't involved.  At all.

Romney will have to defend numbers which don't add up, especially on his tax cuts.  He will have to defend the GOP death to Medicare and Medicaid budget, as well as his own announced health care plan which--a study revealed Tuesday--increases the number of uninsured Americans to 72 million, which is millions more than now.  Jonathan Chiat says it succinctly, and you can bet President Obama will: "The largest and clearest point of distinction in the presidential race is universal access to health insurance. If President Obama wins reelection, his law to provide access to the uninsured will go forward. If Mitt Romney is elected, it will be gutted, and Medicaid — the bare-bones coverage plan for the most desperately poor and sick — will face enormous additional cuts."

But all that is about mere reality.  Bring on the atmospherics!  Because without them, Romney is doomed.  Said best (as usual) by Andy Borowitz:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—With the first Presidential debate just two days away, G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney has been working intensively on two skills that have eluded him throughout the campaign: talking and thinking.

Do the Vote

The most important single factor in the 2012 election is who will successfully vote.

The Obama campaign is concentrating on ground game in the swing states, and right now on early voting.  They're racking up impressive numbers in early voting but there are a lot of challenges ahead.  There's people getting complacent if they think Obama is a lock (which most people polled do.)  There's people who need to believe there is a major crisis or a messiah on the ballot in order to set their priorities to get themselves to a polling place (which in certain cities and states is actually the commitment of hours in line.)  So far the polls suggest the youth vote is just not fired up.  (Although this is comforting--Obama can do less well with college students and still meet his 08 totals.)

Then there's GOPer registration cheating, through the now discredited firm that has forced the RNC to cancel their registration drives in five swing states.  So some Dems can show up thinking they are registered when it fact their registration forms have been torn up because they checked the wrong party box.

And there's the people discouraged from even showing up, either by new GOPer voter suppression laws, or more and more, by the misinformation about the laws.  That remains a problem in the good news/bad news in the basically positive but deeply moronic court decision in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

The basic decision said that the voter suppression ID law would not be in effect for this year's election--that is, voters won't need the ID they couldn't get anyway.  But the judge inexplicably decided that election officials can still ask to see ID, even though they can't turn away anyone for not having one.  Plus the Commonwealth can still keep running TV ads telling people they need a certain kind of photo ID to vote, even though they don't. (No, this isn't the Andy Borowitz/Onion version.  This is the actual decision.)

So the question is--and in PA it won't be answered until election night--is all this confusion going to discourage people from voting?  Because much of President Obama's margin is located in areas where this could be the greatest problem--even his big polling lead may not be absolutely safe, if Dem turnout isn't heavy.

There is the theory that all the publicity and the on-the-ground activity concerning the voter suppression law has energized the Democratic base and the party apparatus, so turnout is going to be big.  The head of the PA Dems seems to think so--he sound angry, and sounds like other people are angry.  And why not?  This is a Reconstruction-style attack on their rights they can do something about.  They can do the vote. 

Meanwhile, Back on Earth...

The U.S. political campaign is involving and expressive, and it is very definitely important.  Today's Rabid Right Republicans are wrecking the potential for this country--and hence a good part of the world--to address the challenges of the future.  A Romney victory would be catastrophic, especially at this moment.

But also at this moment we are witnessing the surreal spectacle of a contest for political leadership that studiously avoids the most important issue facing the country and the planet.  Referring to the latest--and scariest--studies of fast-melting Arctic ice and what that portends, the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert writes:

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this development. We are now seeing changes occur in a matter of years that, in the normal geological scheme of things, should take thousands, even millions of times longer than that. On the basis of the 2012 melt season, one of the world’s leading experts on the Arctic ice cap, Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, has predicted that the Arctic Ocean will be entirely ice-free in summer by 2016. Since open water absorbs sunlight, while ice tends to reflect it, this will accelerate global warming.  Meanwhile, recent research suggests that the melting of the Arctic ice cap will have, and indeed is probably already having, a profound effect on the U.S. and Europe, making extreme weather events much more likely...

Yet, as big as the almost certainly irreversible retreat of the sea ice will figure in the future of the planet, it has attracted relatively little attention in the here and now. A study released on Thursday by Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group, found that over the last few months, Representative Paul Ryan’s fitness routine—he’s a big fan of what’s known as the P90X workout plan—has received three times as much television coverage as the ice loss."

Kolbert notes how little the climate crisis has been even mentioned in the presidential campaign.  Romney brought it up in his convention acceptance speech only to mock President Obama for believing in it, and President Obama gave a stern and definite but brief rejoinder in his acceptance speech.  And that's pretty much it so far.

I expect it will come up in the debates somehow, and it will be interesting to hear what's said about it, and what impact it might have.  But it seems that politicians will be the last to confront this onrushing reality.  In Kim Stanley Robinson's climate crisis trilogy, it takes Washington D.C. being flooded for lawmakers to demand action.  I'm not sure even that would be enough in today's Washington.

But the reality is going to be harder and harder to ignore.  As Rolling Stone notes, the math of catastrophe is so daunting that it can be overwhelming, which I'm sure is at least partly why as a society we won't face it.  I have high hopes for Obama's second term, especially given his determination to marshal public support for change.  (It's forgotten now, but that's how President Kennedy forced the Senate to ratify the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.)  But as of right now, it's a sad, sad thing. 

Note that one scientist says the Arctic will be open in 2016.  That's the next presidential election.  Will anybody be able to ignore the climate crisis then? 

But I believe I've said that before.