Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic mistakes

What’s new Today

Story #1 has a warning for Democrats from James Carville.  #2 looks at the actions by the Obama campaign and their actions indicate they know they are in trouble.  #3 looks at what happened yesterday and from the Democrats point of view it wasn’t a good day.  #4 relates Obama’s economy with Kim Kardashian’s wedding.  #5 has the latest on Elizabeth Warren’s troubles and it isn’t limited to her heritage.  #6 tells you the difference between Spain and the USA or the difference between learned helplessness and earned success.  Finally in #7 is an update about the primary in the Wisconsin governor recall. 

Today’s thoughts

How unpopular is Barack Obama in West Virginia?  In the primary yesterday Obama got 59% of the democratic primary votes and Keith Judd and federal inmate in Texas got 41%.  He won 10 counties and qualifies to have a delegate at the Democratic National Convention. 

The Wisconsin Democratic Primary had less than 627,000 voters (split among four candidates).  This was less than the 665,000 who voted for Scott Walker in the uncontested Republican Primary and far less than the 900.000 who signed the recall petition. 

It appears the Democrats can be for states’ rights upon occasion.  Nancy Pelosi claimed medical marijuana is both a health issue and a states’ right issue.

“They [Republicans] don’t care what anybody says except for themselves and their corporate masters, like the Koch brothers.”  Howard Dean demonstrating what Jonah Goldberg’s Tyranny of Clichés is all about. 

1.   Carville:  WTFU

A long time ago a great three-time governor of Louisiana, Earl Long, said about Jimmie Davis, the two-time not very good governor of Louisiana, "You couldn't wake up Jimmie Davis with an earthquake."

As I go around the country and see various Democrats and talk to them on the phone, honestly I'm beginning to think that we have become the party of Jimmie Davis.

My message is simple: WTFU. Translated -- wake the you-know-what up, there is an earthquake.

You think that Democrats around the country are going to win -- as I hear time and time again from people on the street.

Democratic fundraisers, activists, supporters, and even politicians alike have somehow collectively lapsed into the sentiment that the president is going to be reelected and that we have a good shot to take the House back while holding the Senate.

I ask: What are you smoking? What are you drinking? What are you snorting or just what in the hell are you thinking?

Look around the world -- do you see any governments or incumbents winning any elections out there? Did it happen in small elections in Germany or Britain, big elections in France and Greece or how about huge elections in the United States in 2008 and 2010? Please folks -- wake up!

The polling? Not that encouraging. The latest Democracy Corps poll was 47-47. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has the president up a whopping three-tenths of a percentage point. And I am hearing the garbage that Democratic donors are telling Democratic fundraisers ..."Obama has it in the bag."

Newsflash: Nothing is in the bag. Nothing can be taken for granted. Everybody from the precinct door-knocker, to the Chicago high command, to the White House, to the halls of Congress, to the Senate and House committees, to congressional leadership, here is a simple message: If we don't get on the offense, reconnect with the American people, talk about how the middle class is in a struggle for its very existence, hold the Republicans accountable and fight like the dickens, we are going to lose….

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/08/opinion/carville-democrats-could-lose/index.html

I agree with Carville’s observation about incumbents.  Obama is in big trouble and the Democrats don’t even know it.  Romney wins by at least as much as Obama did in 2008. 

2.   Obama the Underdog

…Actions speak louder than spin, and the moves of Obama’s campaign officials this past week indicate they are awfully worried about their prospects. The most recent telltale sign is that they went up with an early, expensive $25 million ad buy on Monday in nine swing states, attempting to reintroduce the president in the best possible way. This was no rinky-dink purchase; it cost nearly one-quarter of the Obama campaign’s war chest of $104 million at the beginning of April. Going up with such a significant buy so early is the equivalent of abandoning the running game in football when your team is down by a couple of touchdowns.

The ad itself is in search of a cohesive message. The first part underscores how severe the recession was, as a preemptive defense for why the economy hasn’t turned around faster. The second half argues that America is “coming back,” thanks to job growth over the past year. It’s that part that will prove to be a tough sell. Indeed, it was top Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg who advised the campaign in February that this is the type of message -- saying things are getting better when voters don’t agree -- that polls miserably “and produces disastrous results.”

But Obama’s campaign officials can’t utilize the time-tested “are you better than you were four years ago” message because it doesn’t ring true, so they have to argue things are getting a little better and the administration needs more time. It shows how limited the Obama playbook is this time around—mobilize the base, lambaste the opposition, and hope enough independents will hold their nose and vote for you. It’s hard to believe that Obama’s campaign is confident of victory, as Time’s Mark Halperin reported on Monday. More likely, campaign officials are putting on an awfully good game face in light of what promises to be a very challenging reelection.

http://nationaljournal.com/columns/against-the-grain/obama-the-underdog-20120508

Obama seems to think he’s tried hard and so he deserves another term.  It doesn’t work that way. 

3.    Democratic good news:  The Earth still circles the sun

So, some great surprises on primary nights, beyond Indiana…

In Wisconsin , Scott Walker received more votes running against no one in the Republican primary than the two major Democratic candidates got combined.

In North Carolina, “No Preference” garnered 21 percent in the Democratic Party presidential primary against Barack Obama.

In West Virginia,“A felon incarcerated in Texas took one in three votes away from President Obama in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday. Keith Judd, who is serving time in a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, for extortion, took 37 percent of the vote, with 50 percent of precincts reporting. Obama captured the remaining 63 percent.”

I’m sure the night could have gone worse for Democrats, but… I’m not sure how….

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/299443/democratic-highlight-last-night-earth-did-not-crash-sun

The more you look at the polls the more you realize how bad it is for the Democrats.  The close polls on the Presidential race show a bias toward Democrats.  If you eliminate the bias, Obama is significantly behind. 

4.   Desperately avoiding Obamanomics

…The real unemployment rate, when you include the underemployed and those who’ve simply given up looking for jobs that just aren’t there, is almost 15 percent. Since Obamanomics was unleashed - increased taxes, increased regulations, wildly increased spending and weak-dollar monetary policy - a million fewer jobs exist in America, median household income has dropped nearly 10 percent, housing prices have hit an almost 10-year low, gas prices have doubled, a record number of Americans are on food stamps, and the federal debt races toward $16 trillion (around $140,000 per taxpayer).

The only way out of this abyss is, of course, private-sector economic growth. In the aftermath of the recession of the early 1980s, for example, President Reagan’s economic strategy was exactly the opposite of Mr. Obama’s: lower taxes, lower spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), reduced regulations and strong-dollar monetary policy. That produced an average GDP growth rate of 7.1 percent. Now, three years into Obamanomics, America’s GDP growth rate has slowed to a crawl: 2.2 percent.

The administration would like you to think we’ve turned the corner, but calling our current economic status a recovery is like calling the product of a Kim Kardashian wedding a marriage. Technically, it meets the definition, but, come on, nobody’s buying it….

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/8/desperately-avoiding-obamanomics-and-obamacare/

I thought the analogy to Kim Kardashian’s wedding was a good one.  But even in Obama’s video he uses big employment numbers which get much smaller if you look at the rate per month.   We are heading for our third summer of no recovery. 

5.  Elizabeth Warren:  The more you know, the less qualified she seems

… In fact, colleagues and media for years have complained about her scholarship. It's notoriously sketchy. And so is her pedigree.

First the research. Claiming to be an "authority" on bankruptcy law, Warren has written papers and books wildly inflating the role medical bills play in personal bankruptcies.

A Northwestern University peer review of her 2005 paper on the subject, for example, ripped it apart, arguing "the methods were so poor they gave cover to those who want to dismiss the problems of the uninsured — they can say the only paper out there uses a suspect method."

ABC News suggested she was exercising a hidden agenda to promote a government-run health system. Sure enough, President Obama in 2009 seized on her findings to argue for socialized medicine: "The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds."

In fact, as ABC pointed out, the claim cannot be supported by empirical evidence. Asked where he got the flawed data, the White House cited the 2005 study by "Professor Warren."

In 2010, as Obama was floating Warren's name as someone to run his new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "The Atlantic" magazine reviewed her academic work and found a disturbing "pattern" of using bogus metrics to inflate the case for left-wing causes. "Deeply, deeply flawed," it said of her research. "This isn't Harvard (Law) caliber material — not even Harvard undergraduate."

It was a nice way of saying she's a hack….

http://news.investors.com/article/610773/201205081849/warren-scholarship-found-deeply-lacking-academic-vigor.htm?p=full

It appears this woman is a fraud in just about every way you can be a fraud in the academic world. 

6.  Earned Success vs Learned Helplessness

…In the end, I concluded, what set the United States apart from Spain was the difference between earned success and learned helplessness.

Earned success means defining your future as you see fit and achieving that success on the basis of merit and hard work. It allows you to measure your life's "profit" however you want, be it in money, making beautiful music, or helping people learn English. Earned success is at the root of American exceptionalism.

The link between earned success and life satisfaction is well established by researchers. The University of Chicago's General Social Survey, for example, reveals that people who say they feel "very successful" or "completely successful" in their work lives are twice as likely to say they are very happy than people who feel "somewhat successful." It doesn't matter if they earn more or less income; the differences persist.

The opposite of earned success is "learned helplessness," a term coined by Martin Seligman, the eminent psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. It refers to what happens if rewards and punishments are not tied to merit: People simply give up and stop trying to succeed.

During experiments, Mr. Seligman observed that when people realized they were powerless to influence their circumstances, they would become depressed and had difficulty performing even ordinary tasks. In an interview in the New York Times, Mr. Seligman said: "We found that even when good things occurred that weren't earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people's well-being. It produced helplessness. People gave up and became passive."

Learned helplessness was what my wife and I observed then, and still do today, in social-democratic Spain. The recession, rigid labor markets, and excessive welfare spending have pushed unemployment to 24.4%, with youth joblessness over 50%. Nearly half of adults under 35 live with their parents. Unable to earn their success, Spaniards fight to keep unearned government benefits. ..

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304749904577385650652966894.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Obama is looking for Americans to accept learned helplessness.  Everything he is doing is with that in mind.  His attacks on success, expansion of the welfare state, and crony capitalism is moving us directly toward Europe and Spain in particular. 

7.  Meanwhile in Wisconsin

….Democrats have a huge enthusiasm gap

I saw it at my SW Madison polling place where some of the old folks, now widows, who supported me in my county board campaigns a decade ago, hobbled to cast their votes for Scott Walker.

Ann of Althouse also saw it. “Our casual assessment of yard signs in Madison says anti-Walkerites have resigned themselves to defeat. They've already attained closure. It was enough to force Scott Walker into a recall election. He's been unsettled and harassed. No point saying they're actually supposed to win, then, is there?”

The Hard Left is in a dither over Barrett's refusal to show up for an announced "Unity Rally" today in Madison. Instead, they’ll meet privately at Barrett’s Milwaukee home. They’ll probably be a news media “opportunity.”  Barrett has lost the true believers, people like The Crapper, the Big Labor blogger disciplined for blogging on the taxpayers’ time on his Milwaukee County job. On his Cognitive Disobedience blog, he says this about his party’s recall nominee:

"It's like having a boyfriend who says he loves you but doesn't want to be seen with you in public."

“Remember Barrett's rhetoric about putting Madison on a diet, and picking on prisoners with sexual identity disorders? Tearing us down by picking on public employees and vulnerable populations is not ending the civil war, it's tamping one side down.”

Liberals are preparing for doomsday. Saw James Hoffa of the Teamsters (role model for American youth) on the Mr. Ed Show Monday night on MSNBC, talking about Wisconsin. He starts out "Even if we lose ..." The camera went to Comrade John Nichols who, very uncharacteristically, was momentarily at a loss for words….

http://www.ibwisconsin.com/Blogs/Right-On/May-2012/Sing-it-recallers-The-thrill-is-gone/

Wisconsin is looking good for Scott Walker.  The entire article is worth reading. 

Democratic losses and lies

What’s new today

Story #1 tells of the people who are leaving the Democratic Party rolls in 8 key battleground states.  #2 identifies 5 lies in Obama’s fairness speech.  #3 points out the inconsistency of what Obama is demanding in his fairness speech.  #4 reiterates Obama’s threat to veto a continuation of the payroll tax decrease if the Republicans try to put approval of the Keystone pipeline in the bill.  #5 tells about how Chris Christie handled OWS hecklers.  #6 lays out the beginning of a story you’ll read more about.  It appears the Republican insiders don’t like Newt.  In our final story we look at Winston Churchill and see if Newt is our American Churchill. 

1.   Voters Flee Democratic Party

President Obama’s uphill battle to re-election is getting steeper.

A report released today by the centrist think-tank Third Way showed that MORE THAN 825,000 VOTERS IN EIGHT KEY BATTLEGROUND STATES HAVE FLED THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SINCE OBAMA WON ELECTION IN 2008.

“The numbers show that Democrats’ path to victory just got harder,” said Lanae Erickson, the report’s co-author. “WE ARE SEEING BOTH AN INCREASE IN INDEPENDENTS AND A DECREASE IN DEMOCRATS and that means the coalition they have to assemble is going to rely even more on independents in 2012 than it did in 2008.”

Amid frustrating partisan gridlock and unprecedentedly low party-approval ratings, the number of voters registering under a major party is falling fast, but it is also falling disproportionately.

In eight states that will be must wins in 2012  – Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – DEMOCRATS LOST 5.4 PERCENT OF THEIR REGISTERED VOTERS WHILE REPUBLICANS LOST 3.1 PERCENT. The number of independent voters in those states jumped 3.4 percent.

“People are frustrated and the way you tune out in American politics is that is you drop the label of the two parties,” said Steven Jarding, a Harvard public policy professor and Democratic campaign strategist. “The danger for Obama in this is he is not only going to have to capture them but capture more of them because there are less Democratic voters.”…

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/voters-flee-democratic-party-in-key-swing-states/

Less democratic voters sounds like music to your ears. 

2.   Five Big Lies In Obama’s Economic Fairness Speech

Election '12: One thing is certainly true about President Obama — NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES PEOPLE POINT OUT THE FALSEHOODS IN HIS SPEECHES, HE JUST KEEPS MAKING THEM. Case in point: his latest "economic fairness" address.

In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama's argument rests on a pile of untruths. Among the most glaring:

• TAX CUTS AND DEREGULATION HAVE "NEVER WORKED" TO GROW THE ECONOMY. There's so much evidence to disprove this claim, it's hard to know where to start. But let's begin with the fact that countries with greater economic freedom — lower taxes, less government, sound money, free trade — consistently produce greater overall prosperity….

BUSH'S TAX CUTS ON THE RICH ONLY MANAGED TO PRODUCED "MASSIVE DEFICITS" AND THE "SLOWEST JOB GROWTH IN HALF A CENTURY." Budget data make clear that Obama's spending hikes, not Bush's tax cuts, produced today's massive deficits.

And Obama only gets his "slowest job growth" number by including huge job losses during his own term in office. Also, monthly pre-recession job growth under Bush was about 40% higher than post-recession growth has been under Obama.

DURING THE BUSH YEARS, "WE HAD WEAK REGULATION, WE HAD LITTLE OVERSIGHT." This is patently false. REGULATORY STAFFING CLIMBED 42% UNDER BUSH, AND REGULATORY SPENDING SHOT UP 50%, according to a Washington University in St. Louis/George Washington University study….

http://news.investors.com/Article/594075/201112071902/obama-reruns-5-lies-in-fairness-speech.htm

Obama and his supporters keep saying these things and like Dr. Goebbels said 70 years ago, if you tell a lie often enough pretty soon you’ll start believing it yourself. 

3.  Obama’s Fairness Speech

President Obama spoke in Osawatomie, Kansas today, speaking in the vein of the “New Nationalism” speech Teddy Roosevelt gave there a century ago. There was a lot of the usual Obama stump content, including pleas for infrastructure spending, DEMANDS FOR THE RICH TO “PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE,” AND THE TRADITIONAL SHOUT-OUT TO WARREN BUFFETT’S  SECRETARY – a perennial class-warfare martyr who pays a higher tax rate (but a miniscule fraction of the tax dollars) coughed up by her boss. She belongs on Mount Rushmore at this point.

Buried beneath the tired Obama 2012 campaign claptrap – and I wonder if even some of the President’s dwindling base of fervent supporters aren’t growing weary of hearing the exact same focus-grouped phrases tediously repeated, over and over again – were two central ideas, tied back to the “New Nationalism” theme. FIRST: IT’S CRUCIAL FOR AMERICA TO COLLECTIVELY RECOVER ITS ECONOMIC GREATNESS BY PITCHING IN, PAYING FAIR SHARES, and working together under the direction of a benevolent government that will coach Team America to Win The Future. SECOND: EVERYONE SHOULD PLAY BY THE SAME SET OF RULES.

THESE TWO IDEAS ARE ENTIRELY CONTRADICTORY. The Obama presidency comes off as deranged because it’s impossible to reconcile them without going mad.

For example, IF EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO PLAY BY THE SAME SET OF RULES, WHY DO WE NEED 30+ “CZARS” TO EXERCISE HEAVILY FUNDED, LARGELY UNACCOUNTABLE POWERS OVER AMERICANS WHO HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIMES? If we’re all going to play by the same rules now, does that mean the President’s buddies are going to return their ObamaCare waivers?

Indeed, the central concept underlying liberal and socialist thought, THE IMMENSE PROGRESSIVE TAX SYSTEM, IS FOUNDED ON THE CONCEPT OF TREATING PEOPLE “UNFAIRLY.” Obama complained in his Osawatomie speech about sinister millionaires taking advantage of too many “loopholes” to avoid high taxes (hi, Warren Buffett’s secretary!) However, he didn’t have much to say about the huge constellation of manifestly “unfair” rules designed to penalize activities the government disapproves of, or subsidize objectives it finds worthy. ..

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47974

Contradictions don’t seem to bother liberals.  They fight racism with racism.  The country needs jobs and Obama does whatever he can to strangle these jobs in their cribs (See Keystone).  They are against waterboarding because they deem it torture and yet are using drones to kill American citizens. 

4.  Obama threatens veto if pipeline decision is added to payroll tax cut

The battle between the White House and Republicans over the Keystone XL pipeline escalated Wednesday with a veto threat delivered personally by President Obama.

OBAMA WARNED THAT HE WOULD VETO AN EXTENSION OF THE PAYROLL-TAX CUT, HIS TOP LEGISLATIVE PRIORITY, IF HOUSE REPUBLICANS LINK IT TO A MEASURE THAT WOULD FORCE THE ADMINISTRATION TO GREENLIGHT THE PIPELINE PROJECT.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/197901-obama-would-reject-gop-bid-to-tie-payroll-tax-cut-bill-to-keystone-pipeline-decision

So Obama will take a win/win proposition (extension of a tax break for the American public and a pipeline that will provide 20,000 jobs immediately and 200,000 jobs in the future) and veto it???  Actually it isn’t that surprising. 

5.   Chris Christie Interrupted by OWS hecklers:  deals with them

….“You know what, WE’RE USED TO DEALING WITH JOKERS LIKE THIS IN NEW JERSEY ALL THE TIME,” Christie said, as the protesters filed out. “So you guys go all out and chant and do what it is that you want to do.”

Once the room quieted and the protesters were locked outside, Christie resumed speaking and offered his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“Here’s the way I feel about it: THEY REPRESENT AN ANGER IN OUR COUNTRY THAT BARACK OBAMA HAS CAUSED,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “He’s a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and PROMISES EVERYTHING AND THEN COMES TO OFFICE AND DISAPPOINTS, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, THEIR ANGER IS ROOTED IN THE FACT THAT THEY BELIEVED IN THIS HOPE AND CHANGE GARBAGE.”

Christie called them disillusioned and said he “feels bad” for them.

“Now they are angry but they’re not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves,” he said.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/christie-heckles-occupy-protesters-iowa/243566

I do like Chris Christie.  He’s right, they did believe all this “hope and change garbage.”  It appears Obama has gone from Hope and Change to Fear the Republicans, Envy the Rich, and Resent everyone else and OWS has bought the “new garbage” hook, line and sinker.

6.  Newt and the Ruling Class

I just returned from the belly of the beast, Washington, D.C. There is not a more parochial or insular city in the country. While there, I had a conversation with two members of what can be described only as the Republican establishment, one in the print media and the other a K Street lobbyist. In short order, the conversation turned to Newt Gingrich and his surge to the top of the ladder.

THERE IS NO ONE MORE REVILED IN WASHINGTON THAN NEWT. IF ANYONE BELIEVES HE IS PART OF THE ESTABLISHMENT, HE OR SHE IS MISTAKEN. In fact, it would not be a terribly great stretch to say some in the Republican wing of the governing class would prefer to see Obama re-elected than Newt in the Oval Office. However, the vast majority of this class are now in a panic as the preordained choice, Mitt Romney, is truly threatened by the rabble in flyover country constantly looking for anyone but Romney. These people have settled, so it seems, on Gingrich. The increasing volume of commentary of the Beltway insiders and attendant vitriol toward Newt has become a near-hysterical tidal wave rehashing and embellishing Newt's supposed failings and personal "baggage."

Much of this stems from his days as House minority leader and later speaker, when HE RUFFLED MANY FEATHERS AS HIS, AT TIMES, ABRASIVE AND ASSERTIVE PERSONALITY WAS ON FULL DISPLAY. Newt was relentless, with a near-imperious and dictatorial demeanor, in getting many of his and other conservative ideas into law, and he never failed to expound on whatever came to the forefront of his mind. One must realize that THERE ARE NO MORE TENDER EGOS THAN THOSE IN CONGRESS, IN THE WASHINGTON MEDIA, OR IN THE UPPER REACHES OF THE ENTRENCHED BUREAUCRACY. They are all always the smartest in any room (regardless of party affiliation) and do not take kindly to being told otherwise or denigrated by someone who refused to become absorbed by and subservient to the dominant Washington culture.

Thus, many cannot fathom why Newt, of all people, would be in first place in the polls….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/newt_and_the_governing_class.html#ixzz1fwU2enFp

Newt is looking better and better to me. 

7.   Is Newt an American Churchill?

As one of the most polarizing figures in modern American politics, Newt Gingrich has racked up a huge inventory of pungent criticism of both his ideas and his character — much of it from his fellow conservatives. National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, for example, notes Newt’s “erratic behavior, lack of discipline and self-absorption” and “need to justify his every petty move by reference to some grand theory.”

But before becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill was often dismissed in similar terms by members of his own party, who complained that “his planning is all wishing and guessing,” that he was “a genius without judgment,” and that he had been “on every side of every question.” His many non-fiction books were even characterized as “autobiographies disguised as history of the universe.” This is not to suggest that Newt is the next Churchill, which would indeed feed Newt’s grandiosity. Rather, it is to prompt us to recognize one important fact and to ask two questions that have heretofore not been asked….

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/285198/newt-churchill-steven-f-hayward

An interesting article that looks at Winston Churchill and how he ended up being the perfect man for his time in history and wonders if Newt might be the same.