The Final Days

Measuring Enthusiasm in the final days 

Steve Wonder concert for Obama comes up short

Legendary performer Stevie Wonder this morning expressed his love for Cleveland during a get-out-the-vote rally at Cleveland State University.

His love went largely unrequited.

Fewer than 200 people showed up towatch Wonder perform a handful of his hits at the early voting event in support of President Barack Obama.

Cleveland sees 5% of turnout for Obama’s last visit to Cleveland vs 2008

 

Last night, in the cold and with long lines, 30,000 people showed up in Ohio to see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. That same day, Obama attracted a meager 2,800. But enthusiasm for President FailureTeleprompter can be judged by more than comparisons with Romney. In 2008, at his last stop in Cleveland, a Democrat stronghold, Obama attracted 80,000. This morning, at his last 2012 stop in that same city, Obama could only attract 4,000.

Team Obama will spin, as they have throughout the campaign, and tell their stenographers in the Corrupt Media that they've intentionally chosen smaller, more personal venues. But does anyone honestly believe that if President WaterParter could attract crowds even half as large as the ones we saw in 2008, he wouldn't? 

Besides, even if that was the case, in that exact same Cleveland venue, according to the RNC,  McCainwas able to attract a bigger crowd in 2008 than Obama did yesterday. Yes, that's correct, Obama's attracting crowds smaller than John McCain did in 2008 but the polls are telling us he's going to best or beat his D+5 2008 turnout advantage.

Wisconsin comes out for Romney

Friday morning Governor Mitt Romney held a rally at the county fairgrounds. Despite the frosty temperatures, over 1500 people who could not get in attended the “overflow rally” outside the event.

The energy was enthusiastic and upbeat for Romney supporters. Female voters spoke to me about the most important issues to them this coming Tuesday. The overwhelming response was jobs, the economy, and a better future for their children and grandchildren.

Colorado’s last Romney event:  18,000 enthusiastic supporters

This is one I was at.  We arrived 3 ½ hours before the event to long lines.  The crowd was made up of voters of all ages and we all pumped up despite the cold weather.  It was fun to talk with the people near us.  They all were “broken glass” voters, that is, they would be willing to crawl over broken glass to vote for Mitt Romney in this election.  And the enthusiasm is for Romney.  Mitt closed comparing Obama’s call for “revenge” vs his call for “love of country.”  The crowd went wild.  

In the meantime, the Obama team struggles to explain the revenge remark.  

Six Reasons to be optimistic in the final days of election 2012

Here’s one I hadn’t heard before:

The Washington Post has updated its Congressional projections, now calling for House Republicans to roughly maintain their current majority margin in the next Congress -- if not expand on it.  Ed Morrissey makes a good point: If it took an evenly-split electorate (in terms of party ID) to build the 2010 red wave that swept Republicans back into a substantial House majority, how could they possibly hold or enlarge their advantage if 2012's electorate will besignificantly more Democratic, as many pollster are assuming?

This is a very good point.  It’s like predicting a famine when other predictions show bumper crops. 

Another reason to be optimistic:  Desperate religious ad

Socialism disguised as religious faith. 

Desperate ad or simply imbecilic ad—you be the judge

A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for a vagina???? 

New York Daily News endorses…. Romney

“Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship. The hopes of those days went unfulfilled. . . . The regrettable truth is that Obama built a record of miscalculations and missed opportunities.”

Obama Administration admits cannibalizing likely voters

Obama’s early voting strategy is to get less likely voters to vote early, but it appears their efforts may have cannibalized likely voters in early voting. 

Gallup expects +3 Republicans in this election

This will explain a lot of things on Wednesday such as how could the polls have been so wrong?   Most of the polls have +5 to +9 Democrats. 

Minnesota moves into toss up category

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are separated by just 1 point in Minnesota, effectively making the race there a toss-up, according to polling taken for the conservative American Future Fund.

Romney takes 46 percent of the vote to Obama's 45 percent in the poll, which was conducted by the GOP firm NMB Research and shared with POLITICO. The Republican presidential nominee is up 13 points among independents, ahead of Obama 49 percent to 36 percent.

Pennsylvania is in-play also

President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney entered the final days of the presidential race tied in a state that the campaigns only recently began contesting, a Tribune-Review poll shows.

The poll showed the race for Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes locked up at 47 percent in its final week. Romney was scheduled to campaign in the Philadelphia area on Sunday, and former President Bill Clinton planned to stump for Obama on Monday. The campaigns have begun to saturate the airwaves with millions of dollars in presidential advertising.

“They’re both in here because of exactly what you’re seeing” in this poll, said Jim Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling & Research, which surveyed 800 likely voters Oct. 29-31. Most of the interviews occurred after Hurricane Sandy inundated Eastern and Central Pennsylvania. The poll’s error margin is 3.46 percentage points.

If they are really tied at 47, Pennsylvania should go for Romney.  The undecided will go for Romney.

Michigan: Romney and Obama tied

Who are you most likely to vote for in the Presidential election - Democratic President Barack Obama, or Republican Nominee, Governor Mitt Romney, another candidate, or are you undecided?

Republican Nominee Mitt Romney 46.86%
President Barack Obama 46.24%
Another candidate 4.94%
Undecided 1.96%

Tied this late probably means this will go to Romney.

Axelrod:  Romney is going to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota because they are in deep trouble

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, dismissed on Sunday the notion that Mitt Romney is making Pennsylvania competitive as the GOP presidential nominee heads there later in the day. 

"They understand that they're in deep trouble," Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday." "They've tried to expand the map because they know in states like Ohio… they're behind and they're not catching up at this point."

Reminds me of when I was a kid.  I was fighting with my younger brother and had my hands around his throat.  My mother came and pulled me off him.  He looked at me and said, “It’s a good thing mom saved you.” 

Thomas Peterffly’s YouTube Ad

If you grow up in a socialist country you tend to be a very good Americans and conservative.

Who will Navy Seals vote for?

Hint, he isn’t in office now.

NAACP takes over polling station

Yesterday a group of NAACP personal came into a polling station in Houston Texas and proceeded to break election law.  They gave out free water and moved people from the back to the front of the line as they saw fit.  

Green energy: 

Wind farm noise causes “clear and significant” damage to people’s sleep and mental health, according to the first full peer-reviewed scientific study of the problem.

Foreign policy and Biden

Jim Lehrer has no regrets

Moderator of the first debate, Jim Lehrer has no regrets about his role last week.  He got Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama talking.  It is humorous that Clint Eastwood got criticized for insinuating that President Obama was an empty chair and Lehrer has gotten equal criticism for letting Mr. Obama prove it.

CBS correspondent:  Obama is lying to America

It appears Obama is lying to America regarding the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  They haven’t gone away.

The foreign policy debate isn’t going to be the cakewalk Obama and the Democrats imagined even a month ago. 

Obama votes present on Foreign Policy

It appears the US rejected taken any action while the Benghazi attack was taking place, the moral equivalent of voting present.  Is anyone surprised?

Romney finds his voice on Foreign Policy

At VMI, Romney found his voice again. "The attack on our consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on Sept. 11, 2001," Romney said. "This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the administration's attempts to convince us of that for so long."

Romney says it well which is bad news for President Obama.

Biden has some “splanin” to do at the debate

Joe Biden has been a big cheerleader for President Obama praising him for killing bin Laden and saying the Mitt Romney wouldn’t have done the same.  But this is a bit hypocritical since, “One problem with that: Joe Biden opposed the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.”  That’s right, when old Joe tells us that President Obama made a difficult call and Romney wouldn’t have (hypothetical on the Romney part) we do know that the VP wouldn’t have made the same call.

What will Biden do?

Some Democrats may want Biden to come out of the blocks attacking relentlessly Thursday night. The Obama campaign brain trust may feel that their base has been left so shaken by Obama’s performance last week, that it needs to see a Democrat tearing apart his opponent as cruel, heartless, reckless, and so on.

But if Biden’s the designated attack dog of the Obama campaign, he’s also proven, time and again, to be a high-risk one.

Obama draws Tea Party Crowd in San Francisco

And nice article with a lot of pictures on a protest and counter protest at an Obama fund raiser in San Francisco.  Two notables here include the Tea Party chanting “pick up your trash” when the pro-Obama people started to leave and the sign above regarding eye candy.

The New Republic gives the liberal case for reelection

I found the editorial interesting if insipid in its reasoning.  For instance, they go against history and logic in stating the following: 

At times, Barack Obama has failed to appreciate the virulence of the modern Republican Party. He has earnestly entered negotiations with adversaries interested in breaking his presidency, not splitting the difference.

Mr. Obama has never entered negotiations “earnestly.”  He entered as a Chicago style politician whose basic modality was “my way or the highway.”  Evidently the author hasn’t read Bob Woodward’s new book The Path to Power.  And the splitting the difference meme doesn’t work if the other side thinks we are on the wrong road.  “Let’s go another two weeks down this road” doesn’t work to compromise and offer to go one week, if the other side is convinced we are on the wrong road and you’ve already been going down it for the past 4 years.

Pew Poll:  Romney’s amazing turnaround

What a difference a month makes.  Look at the difference among women!

Romney erases Obama’s big lead in Michigan

Obama’s 10 percentage point lead (47%-37%) in a poll conducted last month by EPIC-MRA of Lansing dropped to 3 points (48% to 45%), according to the poll of 600 likely voters conducted by EPIC-MRA of Lansing. The gap between Romney and Obama was within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Undecided voters shrank from the September survey’s 16% to just 7%.

The undecided voters went 1 for Obama and 8 for Romney.  Look to this to be a pattern.

The White House thought they had Romney beaten

“Inside the White House, Romney was such an object of ridicule that it was hard to take him seriously, difficult to narrow the mass of contempt into a single, coherent narrative for not electing the presumptive GOP nominee.”

The problem you have is that if you only get information and opinions from inside your echo chamber, you will find that you may be missing

The Left reacts to Romney’s attack on their church

The Catholics may be upset by Obama’s attack on their church, but the left has joined them in their outrage for Romney’s attack on their church.

Romney dared to declare we shouldn't borrow money to subsidize this attitude adjustment operation.

And there the Left's love of the Establishment Clause ended. CPB, PBS and NPR are their church, and their saints are involved, their beads and incense, their vision of the future.

Is calling President Obama lazy racist?

On Chris Matthews' weekend talk show, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell and Time Magazine's Joe Klein teamed up to insulate President Obama from attack, insinuating that questioning the President's intelligence and work ethic in the wake of a lackluster debate performance is racist.

But didn’t someone very close the President already call him lazy?  

Barbara Walters, ABC News: "What's the trait you most deplore in yourself, and the trait you most deplore in others?" 

President Obama: "Laziness."

The Obama Narrative

In the very best postmodern fashion, Obama and his supporters have relied on a narrative about Obama that has been carefully constructed. He’s brilliant, a great writer, a rare thinker, a moderate, a first-class temperament with neatly pressed pants, a uniter, a cool guy who’s unflappable.

The first debate last Wednesday threatened to make that narrative seem absurd. You might say that the narrative got mugged by reality, and an awful lot of people were watching while it happened.

But the next day there was a new narrative in place — or rather, several narratives: Romney cheated, the altitude was too high for Obama, he didn’t have time to practice because he was too busy with weighty matters, Romney lied, and look at those great unemployment numbers!

Those numbers themselves are another narrative, one that no one can quite figure out because there’s a disparity between one part of the stats and other parts. In a very real sense, the numbers don’t seem to add up. But they’re good for the Obama narrative, unless you think too deeply about them.

But one of the points of a narrative is not to think too deeply about it.

Adkins catches a break

It appears there is a scandal in Missouri only this time it doesn’t involve Todd Adkin, but his opponent Senator Claire McCaskill.  The AP is reporting “Businesses affiliated with the husband of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill have received almost $40 million in federal subsidies for low-income housing developments during her first five years in office.” I expect to see the polls close between these two.