the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

well, at least Mitt has enough on the ball to know that folks in PA call the sort of sandwich that he ordered a "hoagie" (instead of a grinder).

all sandwiches are local

Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney will address the NAACP’s national convention next month, a campaign aide confirmed Tuesday.

News of Romney’s plans to attend the convention, which takes place July 7-12 in Houston, was first reported by April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks. Romney is scheduled to speak on July 11.

http://www.popscreen.com/assets/thumbs/v/original/8491123yTm_o.jpg

oh man

that is gonna be awesome

my first moment of real pity for mitt & his handlers.

Mitt's handlers should have every detail negotiated in advance, if they know anything at all. I would expect a stony, but respectful, silence as he speaks, bcz most delegates to a national convention will not be young hotheads. Probably no Q&A afterward. So, I presume he'll get off comparatively easy.

As the poster at Balloon Juice remarked, "Ladies and gentlemen, you will not see a bigger concentration of side-eye in the known universe."

I'll get ridiculed for this, but: I give him credit for doing it, just like I gave McCain credit for doing it last time. They both know/knew they're getting virtually no votes out of it--I realize the idea is to get some votes from independents who might be queasy about the Republicans and race, and that the speech is, like everything else on both sides, completely political. But he either goes or skips it, and it's better to go.

"it's better to go," ie HE HAS TO, ie why are you "giving credit"?

Bush didn't go in 2004 and it didn't hurt him a bit.

Didn't help him either, of course.

he didn't like black people, as we later were informed.

Well, that's the thing--he doesn't have to go at all. Pretty sure McCain broke a lengthy stretch where Republicans skipped the NAACP altogether. I have no illusions about his hypocrisy and motivations, but I still say it's better to go than not go.

McCain had to stand before the NAACP and say he was wrong not to vote for MLK Day. I think that's worth something.

Garry Wills wrote this bit for Morbs, me, aero, and kev!

George H. W. Bush rightly believes he was sabotaged by the crypto-Republican Ross Perot, who helped Bill Clinton wi

a load of horse shit though

yeah, similar to libs blaming Nader for Dubya

which is the following sentence

http://www.pollingreport.com/hibbitts1202.htm

pre-election polling actually suggests perot stole more votes from clinton, narrowing the margin and improving bush's chances!

exit-polling suggests perot votes would have been distributed to clinton or bush in roughly equal measures. 24% of perot voters would not have voted for either.

one should never let the facts stand in the way of a good storyline

probably some kind of 'ventura effect' where perot did have some of his own audience that wouldn't have bothered with the other two

we're never gonna stop talking about 96 and 00 are we

when the coasts start flooding, I think so

The etherialists who are too good to stoop toward the “lesser evil” of politics—as if there were ever anything better than the lesser evil there—naively assume that if they just bring down the current system, or one part of it that has disappointed them, they can build a new and better thing of beauty out of the ruins. Of course they never get the tabula rasa on which to draw their ideal schemes. What they normally do is damage the party closest to their professed ideals

This is about the size of it imo, though I respect that choice. Not everyone can or should be a pragmatist.

some lesser evils are more evil than lesser.

Dems are 500 mi from my ideals, GOP 500.06.

otm commenter:

Why is it that the only way Gary Wiils and his ilk can ever justify their own tactic is to gesture towards some fantasy Armageddon each election cycle-- if (insert Republican) wins, America will be turned upside down, slavery will be revived, libraries will be burned... What a hocus-pocus form of political argument-- and this passed for "pragmatism"! More like a total lack of imagination and a smug self-absolution. What those who marshal this sort of argument never acknowledge is the fact that the real 'armageddon' already has happened. We had our man in during the recession and what good did that do? We had Larry Summers and Geithner making sure the rules of the game weren't seriously challenged. ...This isn't any "pragmatism" I recognize. Heck, it's not even really a form of political argument. It's just smug defeatism

What those who marshal this sort of argument never acknowledge is the fact that the real 'armageddon' already has happened.

pretty sure Wills explicitly acknowledged this actually

Good luck with a 'victory strategy'.

who expects victory? My hopes are 1% with OWS and 99% with dying before Thunderdome.

idealists living in a fantasy land playing into the hands of the enemy vs one monolithic party and our guy is probably worse

both sides of this argument get so reductive

I completely respect voting with your conscience but on a macro scale to actively wish, as Unger does, for Obama to be defeated by Romney (in the hope of what? The Dems swinging hard to the left and taking the country with them?) is nuts imo.

I don't consider "R is/isn't worse than D" to be reductive. In the long run, it's irrelevant.

Not if you want to join a union or have an abortion or you're an immigrant or…

Always going back to the Healthcare thing - because selfishly that has a direct effect on me and a potentially *huge* effect on people I care about - and of course the Ryan budget.

Obama has busted unions, and deported more Latinos than any other president.

CHORUS: nottttt as muchhhhhhhhh as Rrrrrromney willllllll

I completely respect voting with your conscience but on a macro scale to actively wish, as Unger does, for Obama to be defeated by Romney (in the hope of what? The Dems swinging hard to the left and taking the country with them?) is nuts imo.

― Get wolves (DL), Wednesday, June 20, 2012 3:05 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like this "it'll get better once it gets a lot worse" idea requires a genuine delusion about the predictably of world events. actually i think this idea is seductive because it appeals for the same reason as any shortcut.

honesty i feel like somebody should write an article about how basic cognitive bias towards facile narratives help to explain the appeal of this idea.

note than on the right this concept is shared mostly by survivalist militia types.

x-post

if you're argument is genuinely "romney will cause less damage to people than obama" well, then, ok, we can argue that (even if it is inevitably tinged w/ speculation on both sides).

if it's "we have to make things desperate so that people will realize their real interests are with the Left" then lord help you.

forgive my ignorance, but can you tell me when/how Obama busted unions. that would make me very angry! (xposts)

I don't believe "it'll get better once it gets a lot worse."

I believe "if by some miracle it ever gets better, it'll get a lot worse first."

I'd ask you to back up those assertions Morbs but who am I kidding

See, at least DJP's got his chainsaw

the deportation figures are at least easy enough to google

union-busting... not so much

I believe "if by some miracle it ever gets better, it'll get a lot worse first." in fantasyland

CHORUS: nottttt as muchhhhhhhhh as Rrrrrromney willllllll

always love a good chorus

it's worth noting that wills is no obama apologist -- here's what he wrote in december 2009, when o sent more troops into afghanistan:

I cannot vote for any Republican. But Obama will not get another penny from me, or another word of praise, after this betrayal. And in all this I know that my disappointment does not matter. What really matters are the lives of the young men and women he is sending off to senseless deaths.

he? not we?

AP & DJP, do you know anybody who works in labor organizing? I've gotten earfuls.

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-acts-reagan-1981-union-buster

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12322/whats_the_matter_with_kansas_city/

BHO, 2007:

“And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.”

My labor friend, 2012: "Still waitin' on that one!"

dunno why you'd say 'we' -- reviving that war was clearly obama's pet foreign policy project, and it's pretty consistently unpopular.

President Obama’s endorsement of the firing of the entire faculty and staff of a Rhode Island public school is reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s crushing of the air traffic controllers union, nearly three decades ago.

uh these are not even remotely comparable

i believe that sometimes it can get so bad that it has to get better just bc it can't stay the worst forever or everyone dies and life is extinguished. i do believe it can get a whole lot worse tho, and worse enough that any better that comes later does not redeem how bad it got.