The What Happened Edition

 

What happened to the Polls?

The one thing we can see is that the polls have turned heavily to Romney’s favor.  But there is a bigger story than that in that the polls are still skewed toward the Democrats in the demographics.

Here’s from the Real Clear Politics list

Poll                  Result             Demographic

AP                   R +2                D +6

IBD/TIPP        O+3                 D +7

ABC/WP         R +1                D +4

Monmouth        R +3                D +4

NBC                Tie                   D +6

CBS                O +2                Tie

W.P.                R +3                D +4

The unknown is the turnout, but the indicators are that the Republicans are more enthused than the Democrats are for the coming election.  Rasmussen uses a D +1 poll.  It appears that Romney is much more ahead than the polls indicate.   A recent Gallup poll in the crosstab found more Republicans or lean Republicans will vote this election than Democrat or lean Democrats (2008 this was D+12, now it’s R+3 a 15 point swing).   The last Democrat stand is to try to get the not likely voter to vote and have them do it early.  There are still about 2% who are undecided.  History tells us they will break heavily for Romney. 

What happened to Romney in Colorado?

After a fabulous reception by the crowd at Red Rocks in Colorado, Mitt Romney takes a moment.

Peggy Noonan nails what happened to Obama in Denver

Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. Americans had gotten used to him as The President. Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune. 

What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn't afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.

But that's what he did.

And in some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors—they weren't there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor. He didn't have a teleprompter, and so his failure seemed to underscore the cliché that the prompter is a kind of umbilical cord for him, something that provides nourishment, the thing he needs to sound good. He is not by any means a stupid man but he has become a boring one; he drones, he is predictable, it's never new. The teleprompter adds substance, or at least safe

What ever happened to our post racial President?

Camille Paglia expounds on why she isn’t voting for Barack Obama:  

It would be a tremendous transformation of attitudes. And instead: one thing after another. Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races. 

What ever happened to Keith Olbermann?

Perhaps he has proven himself to be the “Worst Person in the World.”

What ever happened to Global Warming?

The debates this year were absent any mention of Global Warming.  This was the first time this has happened in 24 years.  And what ever happened to Al Gore?   

What happened to pursuing jobs in his first term?

When asked if he regretted pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy, Obama said: 

"Absolutely not," Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. "Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that's not speculation." 

No, it’s not speculation, it simply a falsehood.  Remember what Rahm Emanuel said, "We have the votes. F-- 'em.”  Does that sound like someone who was hamstrung by filibusters?

What will Obama miss the most about not being President?

The plane will be missed and the police escorts too, but I think it will be the lavish entertaining done at taxpayer expense.

The Obama extravaganza two years ago for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, which included a performance by pop star Beyonce cost $969,793, or more than $4,700 per attendee, the documents show.

What happened to the Progressive Paradise

The American people are in for it. When Republicans lose elections, they blame each other: Talk radio blames the RINOs; the squishes blame the pro-lifers; the social conservatives blame the Big Business types, and so on. Each faction maintains that their party will never find acceptance with voters until the rest of the movement looks just like them.

When Democrats lose, on the other hand, they blame America. They tut-tut about gullible voters being way-laid by crafty messaging. Or rubes foolishly voting against their self-interest. Or middle Americans being a bunch of fundamentalist crazies. (Remember the “Jesusland” map after 2004?) With a Republican wave about to wash over the Obama administration, the public is due for a good talking-to. On the nation’s op-ed pages, it’s already started.

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I don’t think they will simply blame America.  Of course America is the primary villain, but Bill Clinton is already being mentioned and we’ve heard the claims that Romney is lying.  I even read a piece that blamed Bush because he didn’t crash the economy back in 2005 so the American public would have elected Obama and seen that he was doing so much more than Bush theoretically could have done. 

Obama fundraiser cancelled because of Sandy

Does this seem like God is against the President? 

New Obama Ad likens voting for the first time for Obama to losing your virginity

Probably this is correct.  In both cases you’ve gotten screwed.

More on Benghazi

AC-130U Gunship was on the scene in Benghazi, but the Obama Administrationrefused to let it fire.   

Obama tells Leno math was okay til 7^th Grade

Tell us something else we couldn’t have figured out.

It's going down hill if you are a Democrat

Democrats start looking for whom to blame

Some Democrats are apparently not waiting for Barack Obama to lose the presidential election before starting the inevitable recriminations about whose fault it was. Whether writing strictly on his own hook or as a result of conversations with campaign officials, New York Times political writer Matt Bai has fired the first shot in what may turn out to be a very nasty battle over who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for what may turn out to be a November disaster for the Democrats. That the Times would publish a piece on October 24 that takes as its starting point the very real possibility that the president will lose, and that blame for that loss needs to be allocated, is astonishing enough. But that their nominee for scapegoat is the man who is almost certainly the most popular living Democrat is the sort of thing that is not only shocking, but might be regarded as a foretaste of the coming battle to control the party in 2016.

Of course they are talking about Bill Clinton.  Not true.  It is Obama and more specifically his liberal policies.  But the liberal left wing media can’t admit that even to themselves. 

An Aura of Defeat?

I think the Romney campaign’s guarantee of victory has mattered much less than the Obama campaign’s recent aura of defeat.

Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them: They go negative hard, try out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals. Think of John McCain’s desperate hope that elevating Joe the Plumber would change the shape of the 2008 race, and you have the template for how tin-eared and desperate a losing presidential campaign often sounds — and ever since the first debate cost Obama his air of inevitability, he and his surrogates have sounded more like McCain did with Joe the Plumber than like a typical incumbent president on his way to re-election. A winning presidential campaign would not normally be hyping non-issues like Big Bird and “binders full of women” in its quest for a closing argument, or rolling out a new spin on its second-term agenda with just two weeks left in the race, or pushing so many advertising chips into dishonest attacks on its rival’s position on abortion. A winning presidential campaign would typically be talking about the issues that voters cite as most important — jobs, the economy, the deficit — rather than trying to bring up Planned Parenthood and PBS at every opportunity. A winning presidential campaign would not typically have coined the term “Romnesia,” let alone worked it into their candidate’s speeches.

So what do you think Obama’s internal polls tell the Democrats?  Even the external polls paint a bleak picture if you put a more realistic breakdown of voters in this election. 


Obama has no regrets; neither do I

It seems Obama has absolutely no regrets about not going after the economy but rather going after Obamacare.  I don’t have any regrets about voting for Mitt Romney either. 



Obama’s second first term plan

It appears Obama’s plan for the second term can be summed up in four words:  More of the same.  If you liked his first term you should love his second term. 


Is this what Obama voters were looking for in 2008?

The Washington Post has a crucial anddisturbing story this morning by Greg Miller about the concerted efforts by the Obama Administration to fully institutionalize – to make officially permanent – the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.

Is Obama the Trixie Schuba of Politics?

"Trixie" Schuba of Austria, was a lethargic freestyler but arguably the greatest figure skater the world.  We keep hearing from the press that Obama won the second and third debate, but more and more voters seem to be switching to Mitt Romney.  How can that be?  Well Trixie was the greatest skater of the compulsory figures but a mediocre free style skater.  After she won the 1972 Olympics, they eliminated the figures from the competition because people just didn’t care about them.   Obama’s “points scored” seems to be less important than the overall impression Mitt Romney has given.  Advantage Romney.

60 minutes complicit in Benghazi coverup

CBS News has released a clip of an interview by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes on Sept. 12 with President Barack Obama that indicates Obama knew the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a premeditated terror attack--and suggests the White House later deceived the public by blaming protests against an anti-Islam video. CBS chose not to air the clip for over a month--but did air Obama’s attack on Romney that same night.Obama told Kroft that the attack in Benghazi was different from the violent protest at the U.S. embassy in Cairo




Is Pennsylvania in Play?

It might be.  It appears that Philadelphia is the major strength of the Democratic Party and one they hope will keep it firmly in Obama’s camp.  But Romney is making a play for the suburban vote in all the battleground states.  In addition, Hurricane Sandy is likely to hit somewhere on the East Coast (New York and New Jersey) and Philly should see a fair amount of bad weather as well.  This could keep down the voting in Philly.  It seems even God may have had enough of Obama.


Warning Signs: Why Democrats need to be nervous

Crowd Size

NBC News anchor Brian Williams is criss-crossing the country with President Obama during the president's 48-hour post-debate swing-state blitz. This morning he told Chuck Todd that it's not 2008 anymore; that the crowd at his current stop Obama would've attracted 50,000 four-years ago but only 5000 showed up today.

Republican enthusiasm

Republicans are growing morepositive about the presidential campaign, posting the highest showing so far this year in the latest poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The findings represent a huge change from just after the party conventions in September, when Democratic enthusiasm was stronger, Pew said.

In the latest poll – of 1,005 people conducted Oct. 18-21 – Pew found that 73 percent of Republicans said the campaign is interesting, up 23 points since early September.

Money flowing into Romney

Mitt Romney's campaign announced this morning that the GOP ticket and the Republican National Committee raised $111.8 million between Oct. 1 and Oct. 17.  If this rate keeps up Romney will raise $204 million in October while Obama just recently borrowed $15 million.

The Effect of the Debates

This year's presidential election was transformed between the first debate's opening statements in Denver and the closing statements in Boca Raton. As a result, most of the negative impressions created by the Obama campaign’s five-month, $300-million television advertising barrage were destroyed. Seen unfiltered, Gov.Mitt Romney came across as an earnest, straightforward, thoughtful conservative with a concrete plan for the nation's future.

The tone of the Obama Campaign

As Obama keeps slipping lower and lower so does the tone of his campaign.  We’ve gone to attacks on Romney for wanting to kill Big Bird to inane comments about binders to a pathetic booklet of Obama’s plan for a second term.  In a recent Rolling Stone’s interview the president referred to Governor Romney as a Bullsh---er.   How low will he go?  We’ve still got 12 days.

And who would hate this kind of Rhetoric the most?  Barack Obama in 2008.  “We have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name calling, without the assumptions of the worst in other people’s motives.”  From hope and change to excuses and blame. 

The effect of Benghazi

It appears this has really hit Obama hard.  The natural advantage he had in foreign policy was taken away and it allowed MittRomney to play the statesman while the President had to take the part of the attack dog.  A recent story told of Bill and Hillary fighting over her releasing her side of the story that would most likely do Obama in.  Benghazi couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the President.

Is it the end or the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels

Fracking technology has already made it practical to exploit previously inaccessible natural gas and oil in the United States (see "Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map "). Now several companies are demonstrating a way to use microörganisms that eat coal and excrete methane—the main ingredient in natural gas—as a possible means of extracting fuel from coal resources that had been too expensive to mine.

Many coal beds contain large amounts of methane that can be harvested by drilling wells. In recent decades, researchers have demonstrated that a large fraction of the natural gas found in the coal beds is produced by naturally occurring microörganisms that feed on coal, and they have found ways to stimulate the microbes to produce more methane. Luca Technologies, based in Golden, Colorado, is using this approach to increase production from coal beds with existing methane wells. Another company, Next Fuel, based in Sheridan, Wyoming, recently showed that it could use similar technology to produce methane from coal beds that didn't already have methane in them, raising the possibility that vast amounts of coal that's currently too expensive to mine could be converted into natural gas.

This is really interesting.  It’s a way to use coal without fouling the environment and it is extremely cost effective.