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.


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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.

Cher says... VOTE!

A public service announcement from Cher and Kathy Griffin:



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Why someone else supports Obama...

Works for me. :-)

The gays speak out for Obama

Wow. Just wow.



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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.

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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!


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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.

Is this why Mitt Romney doesn't want to release his tax returns?

After reading this New York Times article that mentioned the IRS's amnesty program for Americans who hid money in Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxes, I found myself wondering if that's why Romney has been so adamant about not releasing any tax returns for years prior to 2010.

Apparently I'm not the only one speculating about that, as the possibility also occurred to Matthew Yglesias.

Are you better off?

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Awesome speeches tonight at the Democratic National Convention

Elizabeth Warren:


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And Bill Clinton, wow! He's still got it... no one communicates the way he does.


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Quote for the day

No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters. That matters because we don’t run this country for corporations, we run it for people. And that’s why we need Barack Obama.

-- Elizabeth Warren

Unbelievable!

As a software tester, it's unfathomable to me that a mistake like AMERCIA could make it out of Romney's team. And yet... it did. And it doesn't get any better than this. :-)

My favorite #AMERCIA tweet of the day:

Some poor app designer is getting strapped in a cage on the top of a car and driven across country tonight. #amercia

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.


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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...

Danger, Will Robinson!

Romney now has the physics community worried:

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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.

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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

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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.

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