Hey, where's my gift???

While Romney is blaming Obama's victory on the "gifts" he promised to all sorts of special interests (Latinos, African-Americans, young people), an analysis of exit polls shows how important the gay vote was to the president's re-election:

Mr. Obama’s more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup....

Exit polls showed that 76 percent of voters who identified as gay supported Mr. Obama last week, and that 22 percent supported Mr. Romney. Among straight people, each candidate received 49 percent of the vote.

Obama's thank you

Here's an amazing video of President Obama thanking a group of young campaign workers. There's nothing I can add to what he has to say.


(Video link)

Number eight

This was the eighth election I've voted in. It was the first time I've voted for the same candidate twice. And it's only the third time I've voted for the the winner.

I may not have cried like I did on that night four years ago, but it still matters.

Health care reform matters.

Supreme Court appointments matter.

Standing up for equality matters. Especially on a night when voters finally started showing up in favor of gay marriage.

Here's to Obama and Biden's re-election.

Forward.

Presidential debate #2

One of those "a picture's worth a thousand words" moments...

With friends like these...

Republican commentator and former Reagan assistant Peggy Noonan had tons of advice for Mitt Romney today. From her "Time for an Intervention" post:

The central problem revealed by the tape is Romney’s theory of the 2012 election. It is that a high percentage of the electorate receives government checks and therefore won’t vote for him, another high percentage is supplying the tax revenues and will vote for him, and almost half the people don’t pay taxes and presumably won’t vote for him.

My goodness, that’s a lot of people who won’t vote for you. You wonder how he gets up in the morning.

This is not how big leaders talk, it’s how shallow campaign operatives talk: They slice and dice the electorate like that, they see everything as determined by this interest or that. They’re usually young enough and dumb enough that nobody holds it against them, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know much about America....

And his tone is fatalistic. I can’t win these guys who will only vote their economic interests, but I can win these guys who will vote their economic interests, plus some guys in the middle, whoever they are.

That’s too small and pinched and narrow. That’s not how Republicans emerge victorious—”I can’t win these guys.” You have to have more respect than that, and more affection, you don’t write anyone off, you invite everyone in. Reagan in 1984 used to put out his hand: “Come too, come walk with me.” Come join, come help, whatever is happening in your life.

You know what Romney sounded like? Like a kid new to politics who thinks he got the inside lowdown on how it works from some operative.

(Video link)

With less than seven weeks to go, there's still time for Romney to come out of his political coma and make a stronger showing. Which means there is still work to be done to re-elect President Obama. If you haven't contributed to his campaign, what are you waiting for? You can start right here.

Leadership quote of the day

Speaking on the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace:

... You recognize this is going to remain an unsolved problem.... We have a potentially volatile situation, but we sort of live with it. And we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately somehow, something will happen and resolve it.

-- Mitt Romney

Inspiring!

Here are the full videos of Romney speaking candidly to fundraisers at a $50,000 a plate dinner a few months ago. Thank you, Mother Jones!


(Video link)


(Video link) 

The full transcript of the video is here. And a great commentary on all of this from David Brooks:

Forty-seven percent of the country, [Romney] said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Richard Lugar's parting words on partisanship

Here is Senator Richard Lugar's statement about the state of politics in America, released after he lost his primary battle in Indiana. Here's an excerpt:

Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don’t succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today — from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

Obama's evolution

While the potential impact on the election concerns me, I can't deny that I got chills when I heard that President Obama announced his support for same sex marriage.


(Video link)
Frank Bruni at the New York Times wrote a pair of blog posts before and after the Obama announcement about the confusing gay landscape we're now inhabiting and the historic significance of the president's announcement. And Richard Socarides has a great response at the New Yorker.

Once again I'm reminded how much the world has changed in my lifetime...

Believe it or not: moving towards energy independence

The Romney/Gingrich crowd would never admit it, but America is actually moving towards energy independence:

Taken together, the increasing production and declining consumption have unexpectedly brought the United States markedly closer to a goal that has tantalized presidents since Richard Nixon: independence from foreign energy sources, a milestone that could reconfigure American foreign policy, the economy and more. In 2011, the country imported just 45 percent of the liquid fuels it used, down from a record high of 60 percent in 2005.

“There is no question that many national security policy makers will believe they have much more flexibility and will think about the world differently if the United States is importing a lot less oil,” said Michael A. Levi, an energy and environmental senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For decades, consumption rose, production fell and imports increased, and now every one of those trends is going the other way.”

As President Obama stated in January, oil production in America is at an eight year high.

Danger, Will Robinson!

Romney now has the physics community worried:

(Video link)

Romney the Etch-a-Sketch

From the New York Times:

There is, perhaps, no more enduring critique of Mitt Romney than the one about him having shaky principles that shift with the political winds.

So it may not have been particularly helpful when one of his top advisers on Wednesday suggested that Mr. Romney’s campaign views the Republican race as an Etch A Sketch toy that can be shaken up and redrawn from scratch.

(Video link)

Quote of the day

The next time (and there will be one!) that Mitt Romney uses the "blind trust" excuse for why he's not responsible for his investments, just remember his own words:

The blind trust is an age-old ruse, if you will, which is to say you can always tell the blind trust what it can and cannot do. You give a blind trust rules.

-- Mitt Romney, 1994

(Video link)

He's currently using this "ruse" to explain away his investment in a Chinese surveillance company.

The road we've traveled

It's far easier to run for the presidency than to succeed in the office. Once you step into the White House, both your allies and your opponents will fault nearly every move you make.

I know this video was made to make President Obama look his best, but it nevertheless reminded me of what 2008 felt like and how far we've come in the last three years. Like they have been for most people, these have been challenging times for me.

And while there is still a long way to go, and course corrections to be made, for the first time in my life I'll be voting twice for the same man to serve as president.

(Video link)

James Fallows on the Obama presidency

James Fallows takes a balanced look at the successes and failures of the Obama presidency, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the man himself. It's long but well worth a read, especially for anyone who feels like Obama hasn't lived up to their expectations. A couple of excerpts about the presidency in general:

The end of a president’s first term is an important time to ask these questions, and not just because of the obvious bearing on his fitness for reelection. Hard as it is to have any dispassionate discussion of a president’s performance during an election year, it will be even harder once the election is over. If a year from now Obama is settling in for a second term, a halo effect will extend back to everything he did during his first four years. His programs will be more effective in reality, since he will get that many more years to cement them in with follow-up measures, supportive appointments to federal agencies and the courts, and possible vetoes of any attempts at repeal. And, through the lens of history, they will seem more effective, since whatever he did in his first term will appear to have been part of an overall plan that was ratified through reelection.

And:

We judge presidents by the specific expectations they ask to be measured against: inspiration (Kennedy, Reagan, Obama), competence and experience (Eisenhower, the first George Bush), strategic cunning (Johnson, Nixon), integrity and personal probity (Carter), inclusiveness and empathy (Clinton), unshakable resolve (the second Bush). But eventually each is judged against his predecessors, a process that properly starts with a reminder that all begin their terms ill-equipped, in ways that hindsight tends to obscure.

The sobering realities of the modern White House are: All presidents are unsuited to office, and therefore all presidents fail in certain crucial aspects of the job. All betray their supporters and provoke bitter criticism from their own side at some point in their term. And all are mis-assessed while in office, for reasons that typically depend more on luck and historical accident than on factors within their control. These realities do not excuse Obama’s failings, but they do put his evolution in perspective.

Presidents fail because not to fail would require, in the age of modern communications and global responsibilities, a range of native talents and learned skills no real person has ever possessed.

And then this really interesting insight into the inexorable growth of the U.S. national security apparatus:

It is no wonder that the “national-security state” in all its aspects has continued to grow throughout the decades since the beginning of World War II. Defense budgets, intelligence and surveillance networks, private military contractors, irregular forms of war: these and other executive-branch tools of international power work like a ratchet. Some presidents rapidly increase them in times of emergency, as George W. Bush did after the 9/11 attacks. No president scales them back. Thus the imbalance continues to grow between international efforts, where a president has an ever greater array of tools and weapons, and the frustrating domestic arena. Despite having run on his opposition to the Iraq War and overseen the formal U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Barack Obama has, if anything, expanded the range of executive military power, from his unilateral (and mainly successful) decision to intervene in Libya to his expansion of drone attacks

For the Obama-specific analysis, you're going to have to read it here at The Atlantic.

93%

The vast majority of Americans believe that foods containing genetically modified crops should be labeled:

In a nationwide telephone poll conducted in October 2010 by Thomson Reuters and National Public Radio, 93 percent said if a food has been genetically engineered or has genetically engineered ingredients, it should say so on its label — a number that has been consistent since genetically modified crops were introduced. (New York Times)

I first worked on the issue back in 2002 when I was active in the failed attempt to pass Measure 27 in Oregon. Somehow, despite the strong public support for labeling, it still hasn't happened.

If you're part of the 93%, let Congress know here.

I want a time machine

Back in the 80s, even Reagan knew how and when to compromise.

And then there was cruising Main Street, listening to music like 38 Special's "Hold On Loosely."

(Video link)

Sigh.

Cuomo rocks: "We reached a new level of social justice this evening."

Here's a great speech from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo after last night's historic passage of gay marriage in New York state:

(Video link)

Think about it... 25 years ago, the New York Times obituary section still referred to the partners of gays and lesbians as "longtime companions."

We've come a long way, baby.

Happy pride, San Francisco! Happy pride, Seattle! And most of all, HAPPY PRIDE, NEW YORK!!!

New York becomes the 6th and largest state to legalize same sex marriage

Woo hoo, who would have ever believed it? From the New York Times:

The same-sex marriage bill was approved on a 33-to-29 vote, as 4 Republican state senators joined 29 Democrats in voting for the bill. The Senate galleries were so packed with supporters and opponents that the fire marshals closed them off....

Senate approval was the final hurdle for the same-sex marriage legislation, which is strongly supported by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and was approved last week by the Assembly. Mr. Cuomo is expected to sign the measure soon, and the law will go into effect 30 days later, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by midsummer.

Quote for the day

"No Americans are in harm's way. It's just flying robots killing Libyans. You know, peace."

-- Stephen Colbert, last night on The Colbert Report

Obama's logic problem

Funny how everything seems different when you get into that big White House...

I have been generally supportive of our efforts in Libya, but I have to admit I'm a little dubious about President Obama's reasoning on this one:

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.