2012 US General Election Discussions: Start to Finish

[UofMfan]

[Martina]

Gallup changed to reporting likely voters today (as opposed to registered). Because of that, Obama was expected to loose his five point lead, and we'd see an even race. But they do poll daily, and today's poll has Romney with a two point lead.

My eye is twitching.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Martina

Gallup changed to reporting likely voters today (as opposed to registered). Because of that, Obama was expected to loose his five point lead, and we'd see an even race. But they do poll daily, and today's poll has Romney with a two point lead.

My eye is twitching.

There is an old saying "never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory".

That said, this thing isn't over yet but I'm a bit concerned because it's closer than I would otherwise like it to be. I'd prefer Obama safely up by between 8 and 10 points simply to get us outside the margin of error.

Cheers
Aj

[Martina]

[Martina]

Can you imagine getting a call and it actually being Obama on the line? I think he was calling volunteers to thank them. Not sure.

He's so cool. I am starting to have a bad feeling though. Good news is that he is ahead among those voting early, and he is gaining ground with seniors who do get out and vote. The Medicare ads are probably having an effect. Otherwise the momentum is still all Romney's, and that's bad since they are essentially tied. Scary days.

[Kobi]

Ann Romney will visit the women of ABC's "The View" solo Thursday, her husband no longer available to appear on the show he once referred to as "high risk."

"Governor Romney was supposed to be on with us this Thursday with Ann Romney," Walters said. "We were looking forward to it. Over the weekend, his people have said that he had scheduling problems, and would not be coming on with us, nor did not feel that he could reschedule. We are happy to have Mrs. Romney on with us, and are sorry that we won't have Governor Romney, and that's the situation."

In September, in leaked footage from a fundraiser Romney is heard saying that while "The View" is "fine," it is "high risk because of the five women on it, only one is conservative and four are sharp-tongued and not conservative."

Co-host Sherri Shepherd said at the time that she wasn't sure how Romney could be able to "handle the country" if he can't "handle four sharp-tongued women."

http://news.yahoo.com/romney-wont-fa...-politics.html

------------------


I am not a View fan but this might be worth watching.

[Soon]

[Soon]

[Martina]

I looked it up. There's nothing on Obama's schedule today except the morning briefing. I should hope not. No sightseeing! No football. No breaks of any kind. Don't even eat. Better you should be hungry tomorrow.

[Martina]

Romney has gained less than half a point in the last few days. I think the bounce happened. He still has the ground gained, but there is no more forward momentum from it.

Man, there is a lot of pressure on Obama tomorrow. He's still winning because of his slight lead in key swing states. I have been watching the Vegas odds too. Right now it's Obama 4/9 and Romney 7/4.

In a bizarre but also good note, Obama has a slight lead in Arizona. That's 11 electoral votes. That would be huge. We wouldn't need Virgina, which is iffy. Florida looks like it is gone. No surprise.

What concerns me, other than Obama's performance tomorrow, is voter suppression in Ohio. I remember during Bush-Gore, Republicans from other states bussed up to Ohio to intimidate voters in line. During Kerry-Bush, sending too few voting machines to Democratic districts resulted in those horrible lines. And there were machines in Youngstown, I think, that switched votes from Kerry to Bush automatically. Supposedly a malfunction.

And this year's brouhaha re early voting. And did you hear about these billboards? In minority neighborhoods around Cleveland. Clearly meant to intimidate.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Martina

I looked it up. There's nothing on Obama's schedule today except the morning briefing. I should hope not. No sightseeing! No football. No breaks of any kind. Don't even eat. Better you should be hungry tomorrow.

We can look up the Presidents daily schedule?

[Martina]

Yup.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule

[Sparkle]

Rosie Perez

Perez mocks the Republican nominee in a YouTube video posted Sunday — part of a series of humorous ads targeting Romney, entitled, “Actually ... the truth matters.”

The super PAC-powered campaign, which is backed by the Jewish Council for Education and Research and the American Bridge 21st Century, aims to spread “the truth, because the truth matters — even in politics,” according to the actually.org website.

The excerpt includes Romney saying it “would be helpful to be Latino” in his effort to win the election.

[Corkey]

She was on Maddow last night and was wonderful. Maddow got all kinds of flummoxed, it was cute.

[Martina]

[Martina]

[Martina]

[Martina]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...721b_blog.html

Vice President Biden was proud of President Obama’s debate performance.

“You all saw the man that I have sat with every day on average four to six hours a day,” Biden said on Wednesday, Politico reported.

More revelatory than the fact that Biden was pleased with Obama’s performance was this news that Biden spends “on average four to six hours a day” sitting with the president. I would wager that even Obama was not aware of this.

Fortunately, I was able to probe deeper.

Here is how this went.

Day 1: “Great that you’re president, huh?” Joe Biden says, sitting down.

“Yeah,” President Obama says.

“We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, huh?” Joe says.

“Sure will, Joe.”

“We’ll spend four hours a day together, I bet. Literally.”

Obama laughs. “Literally,” he says. “Good one. Good night, Joe.”

Day 8: Biden and Obama watch a football game together for almost four hours. They enjoy it tremendously.

Day 24: Biden and Obama go fishing. Eight hours.

Day 390: Joe Biden strolls into the Oval Office and flings himself into a chair.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be, Joe?” Obama asks, after two hours have elapsed.

“Not really,” Joe says.

They sit there in silence for two more hours.

Day 700: Alarmed by Biden’s constant, average presence, Obama tries to turn the tables.

Biden is taking a long shower as the president comes dashing in and makes a big show of sitting down on the sink.

“How does it feel, Joe?” he asks. “Huh? How does it feel to have someone sitting there while YOU’RE trying to go about your day? Huh? You need to quit this thing right now.”

Biden climbs out of the shower and reaches for a towel. “Did you say something, Mr. President?” he asks. “I can’t really hear when I’ve got the water on. Good to see you.”

Day 703: Obama plays a round of golf. Biden insists on caddying, even though the president repeatedly tells him, “No, Joe, really, I’ve got it.”

Day 974: Biden knows that he will spend the next week on the campaign trail so he spends 18 full hours sitting with Obama, just to keep the average up.

“Joe, this is getting to be a problem,” Michelle says, somewhere around Hour 17, kicking him by mistake as she tries for more of the blanket.

Joe sits there in silence for another hour.

Day 975: “Joe, Michelle and I didn’t get any sleep last night,” Obama tries, gently, touching Joe’s shoulder as they head towards the motorcade.

“You don’t understand,” Biden says, gazing defiantly at him. “I am the Cal Ripken of sitting with you for four to six hours on average every day. Don’t take this away, Mr. President.”

Joe sits there silently for four more hours.

Day 1003:Michelle and Barack celebrate their anniversary at an intimate candlelight dinner in a restaurant. They have expressly warned the Secret Service not to let “Celtic” follow them.

Midway through the soup course, Obama gestures and knocks over a potted plant to reveal Biden sitting there, cleverly disguised as a large fern.

“Joe — ” the president begins, in a feeble, broken voice.

“Mind if I just sit here for a bit?” Joe asks, pulling up a chair. “I still had two hours to clock in, according to my spreadsheets.”

The president sighs. “Sure, Joe,” he says. “Not a problem.”

Michelle glowers at him.

Day 1189: Joe Biden sits behind President Obama in debate prep room. “You’re going to do great, Joe,” he says, repeatedly, grinning at the mirror.

“Joe, please,” the president says. “This is distracting.”

Joe points knowingly at the mirror. “This guy,” he says. “Some veep, huh?”

“Joe — ” the president begins, in a strangled voice.

“Want a back rub?” Joe asks.

“No.”

Joe sits there in silence for three hours.

Day 1200: President Obama, Malia, Sasha, and Michelle, along with Jill Biden, call a Family Conference.

“Joe,” President Obama begins, after a few false starts. “You are wanted and needed around here, but you have to stop sitting with me for hours every day. It’s giving us all the heebies.”

“Sure I will,” Joe says.

“Well, great,” Michelle says.

“That’s great, Joe,” Jill adds.

“I have homework,” Sasha says.

“I’ll come help you,” President Obama says, heading for the door.

“Me, too,” Joe cuts in. “I’m really good at algebra.”

Day 1217: President Obama, seated inside a barbed-wire “No Joe” perimeter with a large brown dog curled up in front of his desk, heaves a heavy sigh of relief at not having seen Biden in more than 20 hours. He is shaking all over. He drinks another Red Bull.

“Finally,” he says. “Finally. Joe’s finally taken the hint.”

The brown dog sits up and removes the head of its costume. “Did I hear someone mention me?” Biden asks, brightly.

Obama clutches the desk as the world swims before his eyes. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “That’s it, that’s it, that’s it! I’ve finally lost it!”

“Time for the first debate, sir,” a Secret Service agent announces, walking through several steel doors.

Day 1461, Wednesday: “You all saw the man that I have sat with every day on average four to six hours a day,” Joe Biden says.

Somewhere, President Obama starts shaking uncontrollably.

By Alexandra Petri | 05:30 PM ET, 10/17/2012

[Martina]

President Obama Accuses Opponent of Contracting “Romnesia

Standing in front of a bleacher consisting entirely of women at George Mason University today, President Obama introduced a joking new line of attack designed to paint his GOP opponent’s pivot to the center as insincere and deceptive.

“Now that we’re 18 days out from the election, Mr. ‘Severely Conservative’ wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year,” the president said. “He told folks he was the ideal candidate for the Tea Party, now he’s telling folks, ‘What? Who me?’ He’s forgetting what his own positions are. And he’s betting that you will too.”

Continued the president, “he’s changing up so much and backtracking and side stepping we’ve got to name this condition he’s going through.

“I think it’s called…’Romnesia,’” the president said to cheers and laughter.

“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,” the president said in the battleground state of Virginia, where recent polls show Mitt Romney with momentum.

The crowd cheered ebulliently.

“We can fix you up!” said the president, who trails by seven points in the latest Gallup Daily Tracking Poll. “We’ve got a cure! We can make you well, Virginia!… This is a curable disease!”

“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,” the president said, sounding not a little like comedian Jeff Foxworthy.

“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,” the president said. “If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose but you stand up at a primary debate and say that you’d be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, then you’ve definitely got Romnesia.”

. . . the President said Romnesia extends to “other issues. If you say earlier in the year, ‘I’m going to give a tax cut to the top one percent’ and then in a debate you say ‘I don’t know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks,’ you need to get a thermometer and take your temperature, because you probably have Romnesia.

“If you say that you’re a champion of the coal industry when, while you were governor, you stood in front of a coal plant and said ‘this plant will kill you’ -”

The crowd, for this one, chimed in “you probably have Romnesia,” prompting the president to laugh and say, “that’s some Romnesia.”

Said the president, “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!”

[alexri]

I'm seeing a lot of chatter on independent and left newsites and facebook pages about Tagg Romney (son of Mitt) having purchased electronic voting machines that will be used in the 2012 elections in Ohio and other states. The news is that a Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital has taken over Hart Intercivic, the voting machine company.

Is anyone else hearing this? And if true how the heck is this legal?