Swing States Pose Obstacles to Obama's Reelection

I was starting to hedge a bit on my prediction of President Obama's defeat next November, but maybe I shouldn't worry about it. Reelection looks pretty remote at this point.

See USA Today, from earlier this week, "Swing States poll: Obama's path to 2nd term an uphill climb":

WASHINGTON – For President Obama, the path to a second term is going to be an uphill climb.

While Americans across the nation are downbeat about the economy and the future, a special USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that voters in a dozen key battleground states for the 2012 election are in an even deeper funk about their lives, Obama's tenure and the nation's politics.

One year before Election Day, the debut Swing States survey charts a narrower and more difficult course to victory for Obama than he navigated four years ago — and shows opportunities for Republicans in some states that have gone Democratic for decades.

Obama has "had some really good ideas … but he's struggling with trying to get his ideas into place and dealing with Congress, and he hasn't done a very good job with that," Mary Jo Jones, 57, of Grand Rapids, Mich., said in a followup interview after being surveyed. She supported Obama in 2008 but would consider switching in 2012 to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, if Republicans nominate him. "He seems to be a pretty good businessman, and he might have some ideas to help us on the economy."

Michigan, which has backed the Democratic candidate in the last five presidential elections, is among the 12 swing states likely to determine the outcome next year. The others are Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in the South; Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico in the Mountain West; Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin in the Midwest; and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania in the Northeast.

Continue reading.

Unemployment's down to 9 percent nationwide --- pretty lousy, I know, but we have the Electoral College, so it's the state numbers that will matter most. I've mentioned Ohio quite a bit in earlier analyses. Ohio's unemployment rate is 10 percent and the state has 18 electors. Pennsylvania's cited as a swing state and the state's got 20 electors. Pennsylvania reported an 8.3 percent unemployment rate in September, which apparently triggered the extension of unemployment benefits. Pennsylvania's unemployment was 8.8 percent when Obama took office, so folks will be hammering him on the campaign trail: "Where are the jobs?" We'll just continue to look at the key swing states for developments. It's hard out there for a Democrat.

RELATED: At Invincible Armor, "Obama: “We’re Better Off Today Than When I Took Over”."

Progressive Race-Based Attacks on Herman Cain

Herman Cain's race shouldn't be an issue in this campaign. We already have a black president. And as we've seen for almost four years now, the substantial racism we've seen in politics has been an exclusive domain of the left. This clip with Karen Finney is a perfect demonstration of leftist racism. The woman even admits "it's harsh" to talk the way she does. What a perverse investment. Radical progressives invent a racist Republican base at the same time that national public opinion polls see Herman Cain as the GOP frontrunner. No wonder the Democrats are in the death throes going into 2012. They can't relate to average Americans without insulting them as racists.

See William Jacobson, "Saturday Night Card Game (Race-based attacks on Herman Cain expose left-wing hypocrisy, once again)."

And lots more commentary at Maggie's Farm and Memeorandum. And see Allahpundt at Hot Air:

Cathy Young wrote an article for Reason a few days ago about the left’s endless race-baiting of Cain, but I don’t know what she was thinking in rushing that piece out now. There’s literally months of this to come, and it’ll be ten times as obnoxious if he pulls the upset in Iowa and suddenly looks poised to make a real run at the nomination.

Okay, what the heck? Here's Young's piece: "The Left's Race-Baiting of Herman Cain."

Yeah, it's still early. Get ready for a vicious season of progressive racism.

Socialism and Occupy Wall Street

Progressive nitwit Matthew Yglesias has this at The New Republic, "How Occupy Wall Street Is a Rational Response to a System That’s Failed" (via Memeorandum).

Yglesias' (idiotic) essay is part of the series, "‘Liberalism and Occupy Wall Street,’ A TNR Symposium." I read Fred Siegel's piece earlier, which is much better, "Occupy Wall Street and the Return of the McGovernites":

The editors of The New Republic are wiser than they know in trying to keep their distance from the Zuccotti Park protesters. In their zeal to recapture the spirit of the 1960s, the Occupy Wall Streeters are replicating the very processes that produced the current crack-up of liberalism. But if the editors arrived at the right conclusion, they came to it by a false path, one which has produced a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of American liberalism.

The core of the TNR editorial lays out what in principle is an honorable and essential difference between liberals and radicals. Unlike radicals, “liberals,” says TNR “are capitalists.” But that underlying premise of the editorial is belied by the historical record.

Herbert Croly, the founder of TNR, understood himself as a radical for whom the use of the then uncommon term “liberal” was merely a euphemism for an American sort of socialism. Croly spoke of his seminal book, The Promise of American Life—the founding document of American liberalism—as “socialistic.” It’s true that it was only in the 1930s that many at TNR openly referred to themselves as socialists. But looking back, in 1931, Edmund Wilson argued strongly for liberals to give up Croly's "gradual and natural approximation to socialism" and to embrace socialism openly.

The period from roughly 1950 to 1970 was the anomaly. It took the concussive effects of the Communist conquest of Eastern Europe in the wake of World War Two to temporarily pull liberalism off its socialist path.

The radicals of the 1960s deployed their justified opposition to the Vietnam War to blind themselves to the consequences and meaning of statism and Stalinism. Their aggressively willed ignorance produced the 1972 McGovern platform which re-wrote the traditional program of the European socialist parties in the American language of rights. Employment, educational quality, and housing were to become matters of right subject to the power of judicially supervised bureaucracies.

Since then the distinction between liberalism and anti-capitalist radicalism has been continuously effaced by the rise of a vast regulatory state staffed, in part, by public sector unionists. Statism in America eschewed a European-style ownership of the means of production. Rather its aim has been, in the name of good and defensible causes such as a cleaner environment, to run as much of the economy as possible through government, directly and indirectly. The upshot is that the American percentage of GDP devoted to government has reached European levels. And by and large liberals approve of this trend. According to a February 2010 Gallup survey, 53 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of liberals have a positive image of socialism. The Gallup findings were backed up by a December 2010 Rasmussen survey which found that 42 percent of Democrats—the people whom former Presidential candidate Howard Dean described as “The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party”—think that the government should manage the economy completely.

More at the link.

One of the things about American socialists (radical progressives) is how vehemently they deny their essential commitment to socialism (radical progressivism). I like how Siegel speaks truth to power: American "liberalism" really is socialism. Some of the major writers of the 20th century had no qualms about applying the proper terminology. But since socialism is deeply unpopular in the United States --- at least those policies explicitly labeled socialist --- the left must adopt evasive language and ideological misnomers. Matthew Yglesias claims he's "liberal" but he's one of the biggest mainstream socialists writing today.

Anway, Siegel doesn't go far enough with his analysis. He lamely piles on the attacks on Wall Street, when we know that the same bureaucratic explosion he elaborates is what brought about the housing crash in the first place. (See, "Wall Street Did It?") Big government socialist statism is killing us. Folks like Matthew Yglesias have their fingers on the triggers, or on the meat cleavers, be that as it may.

Rick Santorum Slams 'SNL' Debate Parody as 'Bullying'

Well, GOP candidates are gonna get this stuff from the "tolerant" progressive-entertainment types. And I'll bet SNL's writers couldn't wait to smear Santorum as some closeted-gay conservative hypocrite cruising the Castro.

At The Hill, "Santorum calls SNL sketch 'bullying'."

I gotta admit, though. Bachmann taking down Newt was pretty good.

Ads for Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson Signal New Tactics for Outside Groups

At New York Times, "Ads by Democratic Senator May Open Door to New Tactics":

WASHINGTON — A new series of political advertisements on behalf of an embattled Nebraska senator could open the door to a flood of similar ads financed by outside groups and even businesses working directly with political candidates — a sharp departure from past practice.

The ads are innocuous enough on their face: Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat up for re-election next year, is featured on television and radio commercials discussing Social Security, the national debt, war veterans and other hot-button issues. What is remarkable, campaign finance lawyers and political operatives say, is that the ads were produced and paid for by Democratic Party officials in Nebraska and Washington — with the senator’s close involvement as their star.

Federal campaign rules restrict politicians from “coordinating” their advertisements with outside groups except under certain circumstances. Politicians — worried about tripping over the legal restrictions — have usually shied away from working directly with outside groups on ads. Instead, “issue” ads paid for by outside groups will typically hit on broad themes without focusing so squarely on a single lawmaker.

The Nebraska ads, which have cost Democrats more than $600,000 to run so far, could change that practice in a way that has wide implications for the 2012 elections, when 33 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs.

Interesting.

More at the link.

'Long Live Revolution! Long Live Socialism!'

Via Zombie, "Occupy L.A. Speaker: Violence will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals" (at Memeorandum):

Ann Coulter on 'Occupy Wall Street'

This is perfect!

Following up on my post from yesterday, "Barbara O'Brien is the Mob!", here's Ann Coulter (via Astute Bloggers):

RELATED: "COULTER ENDORSES ROMNEY-CAIN."

'The United States may face the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s — but 'isolated Obama knocks off by 4pm'

At London's Daily Mail, "Obama finishes work at 4pm... but he could be saying bye for good as only 41% want him to have a second term."

That piece draws on Michael Goodman, "Aimless Obama walks alone." And some reactions at Memeorandum.

Governor Jerry Brown Signs California Dream Act

A Democrat GOTV bill for the illegal alien electorate.

At LAT, "The law grants illegal immigrants access to state aid at public universities and colleges."

RELATED: At Michelle's, from 2010, "DREAM Act nightmare: A massive open-borders entitlement program."

Why Labor Backs 'Occupy Wall Street'

From Mary Kay Henry, at WSJ (and at Google).

Amazing how the jobs she cites are public sector jobs nearly to the one. And that's going to reinvigorate the economy?

We can't begin to fix what is wrong with our economy without creating good jobs. We have work that needs doing in this country and millions of Americans looking for full-time work. It's time to put the two together to make America a stronger nation. And it's time to use the money being made on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms across the country to put Americans back to work.

Congress can begin by passing the American Jobs Act and immediately put Americans to work rebuilding our outdated and dangerous roads and bridges and ensuring our kids have first-class schools. We can invest in our communities to keep teachers in our classrooms, police on the beat, health-care workers at our hospitals and clinics, and ensure that we have enough firefighters to protect our communities.

The 2.1 million nurses, janitors, school-bus drivers and other members of the Service Employees International Union stand arm in arm with the peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors. While unions cannot claim credit for Occupy Wall Street, SEIU members are joining the protesters in the streets because we are united in the belief that our country needs a change.

Nobody can predict what's next for the Occupy Wall Street movement. And no one institution or person should try to exert their pressure on this inspiring collective of people.

The importance of the Occupy Wall Street protests lies in the simple fact that all it takes is a small group of courageous people to light a spark and forever change the arc of history. The auto workers in Flint, Mich., lit that spark in the 1930s through their sit-down strikes and forever changed American industry. The civil-rights activists lit that spark when their sit-ins forced us to confront the racial inequality that poisoned our nation.

We saw that spark in Tahrir Square and across the Middle East this Arab Spring as a few brave people inspired millions of fed-up citizens to challenge their governments and demand better lives.

Actually, it took a Radiohead concert hoax to get (some resemblance of) a critical mass of people to show up. And these same union people are astroturfing the rest. It's pretty much a joke. The Egyptian street overthrew a dictatorship that held power for 40 years. Wall Street is not Mubarak. People who need jobs need banking, finance, investments, and savings. And it's the Democrats who have failed people for the last 30 months. Up is down and down is up in these freaked out political times. One sure thing is that Obama's gonna be a one-termer, and perhaps then we'll have some change folks can believe in.

Obama and the Occupy Wall Street Movement

The most honest and genuine development I've seen with Occupy Wall Street is the protesters marching on the White House. The New York Times has this, "Protests Offer Obama Opportunity to Gain, and Room for Pitfalls" (via Memeorandum):

WASHINGTON — Anti-Wall Street protesters marched past the gates of the White House on Thursday, bringing their message of economic injustice to the capital and posing an opportunity, but also a threat, to President Obama, who presents himself as a fervent defender of the middle class.

Brandishing placards that said “No More Wall Street White House” and chanting “Shame! Shame!” the crowd took aim at the president, even if it saved most of its vitriol for the nearby headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — or as one banner labeled it, “Chamber of Corporate Horrors.”

To hear some Democratic analysts tell it, the mushrooming protests could be the start of a populist movement on the left that counterbalances the surge of the Tea Party on the right, and closes what some Democrats fear is an “enthusiasm gap” between their party and Republicans in the 2012 election.

But that assumes the president is able to win the support of these insurgents, rather than be shunned by them.

Mr. Obama, in a series of recent hard-edged speeches around the country, has channeled many of the grievances of the movement known as Occupy Wall Street: deepening economic inequity, a tax code that gives breaks to the wealthy and corporate interests and banks that profit from hidden consumer fees.

Yet the president also oversaw a bailout of those banks, appointed a Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, who is viewed by the protesters as a shill for Wall Street and pushed a reform of the financial industry that many in the movement condemn as shamefully inadequate in curbing its excesses.

“There’s a lot of discontent with Obama’s policies,” said Kevin Zeese, an organizer of the protest, which drew about 500 people. “Obama is out of touch. He’s busy going around the country raising $1 billion to run for re-election.”

At his news conference Thursday, Mr. Obama seemed to recognize the potential and pitfalls of the moment. He sympathized with the frustration of the protesters and criticized Republicans for trying to roll back regulations. But he also defended the bailout and the financial reforms known as Dodd-Frank.

“These days, a lot of folks who are doing the right thing aren’t rewarded, and a lot of folks who aren’t doing the right thing are rewarded,” he said. “And that’s going to express itself politically in 2012 and beyond until people feel like once again we’re getting back to some old-fashioned American values.”

Even before the protests welled up, Mr. Obama’s political advisers said he would focus heavily on the issue of fairness, tapping into a widespread sense among middle class voters that they lost the most in the recession.

Underscoring his more populist tone, Mr. Obama confirmed that he was open to paying for his $450 billion jobs bill by levying a tax surcharge on people with incomes of more than $1 million. The White House had earlier been cool to the proposal, made by Senate Democrats, in favor of taxing a broader group.

The comparison between Occupy Wall Street and the tea parties is bogus, of course. And it's frankly obscene that folks think Obama should benefit politically from these protests. The White House has been in bed with Wall Street. The dilemma for the Democrats is how they can channel the protests against the Republicans without getting caught up in a generalized anti-government tsunami in 2012. As was clear at the press conference yesterday, the president will basically lie through his teeth, blaming the economic crisis on his predecessor and waging a morally bankrupt class war on the high-income earners.

President Solyndra

From Steven Hayward, at Weekly Standard:

The spectacular collapse of Solyndra has all of the trappings of an epic Washington scandal, with serial revelations of embarrassing and potentially improper White House machinations to secure a $535 million federal loan guarantee for a startup company with dubious prospects of success. The sudden bankruptcy of the Fremont, California, manufacturer of solar panels​—​after it was feted as a model creator of “green jobs” by President Obama and Vice President Biden​—​has already featured FBI raids, contentious congressional hearings, and demands for a special prosecutor to investigate. The plot thickened further last week when Solyndra’s two top executives, who made 20 trips to the White House while their loan application was under consideration, invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Even if the administration eventually escapes any finding of legal wrongdoing, Solyndra threatens to haunt the green energy campaign in much the same way that the collapse of Lincoln Savings became the emblem of the savings and loan industry’s recklessness in the 1980s. The Solyndra story includes Obama campaign donors and everybody’s favorite Wall Street whipping boy, Goldman Sachs, in the middle of the whole sorry mess. Yet it would be a mistake to mark the story down as merely another excrescence of crony capitalism. It is much worse.

More at the link.

And see WSJ, "White House Brushed Off Solyndra Worries, Emails Show."

'The Insidiousness of Racism'

I saw WaPo's article trending yesterday, "At Rick Perry’s Texas hunting spot, camp’s old racially charged name lingered." Governor Rick Perry used to have a Texas hunting ranch near Paint Creek that he used for gatherings and political events. Apparently, a huge rock with the name "Niggerhead" greeted visitors at the entrance gate. The New York Times picked up the story today, stating that the "latest flare-up ... injected the issue of race into the Republican nominating fight..." Interesting how this "flare up" was completely invented by the mainstream press. I doubt folks really care about some old rock painted with an offensive moniker that was not only painted over when Perry's father took lease of the property, but had been turned upside down as well. But the Democrat-Media-Complex continues its endless jihad to portray conservatives as racist bastards, and "Niggerhead" must be the moment's perfectly ugly remnant of the South's racist past.

And still, the responses are over the top, especially from Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic. That's his term, "the insidiousness of racism." And it is that, the real racism that historically infected society, as I've reported here many times from personal experience. But Ta-Nehisi is one of the left's most prominent institutional race-mongering asshats. He literally lives and breaths racial victimology. It's not that we're occasionally confronted with the wildly bigoted old codger who still uses racist epithets and could care less what folks think. No, with Ta-Nehisi and his ilk every singular example of racist bigotry is an indictment of the whole of American white society. Forget for a moment that we now have a black president. Forget that it's now almost 60 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Nope, for progressives no benchmark of progress is enough. To recognize even the slightest vestige of racism's past is to provide progressives with yet another hammer against their political enemies.

So let's be honest: There's no defending this "Niggerhead" rock. But show me the Texas Republicans who paint similar rocks at their hunting grounds. Where are they? I doubt there are many, since the old Jim Crow racism is more repudiated than ever. In any case, see Michelle's piece on this, "Rick Perry and the Macaca Media":

The same lib media outlet that took down George Allen over a dunder-headed moment on the campaign trail in order to perpetuate the GOP=racist meme is trying to kick up dirt over a stone — a stupid stone — that has been painted over and turned over for years.

What does it say about Rick Perry? Nothing. Nada. Zip.

While the Post tries to impose an old narrative on Perry and squeeze blood from a stone, the reality is that Perry has gone out of his way to pander to left-wing impulses on race.

This is the guy that has disparaged his own base as racist in two separate GOP debates.

Remember?

Follow that link.

Antonio Johnson Donates Kidney to Grandmother — After Being Killed in Drive-By Shooting

This story is sad, yet with some hope thrown in.

What's so striking is that the boy offered to donate a kidney before he died, although his mom said no. His grandmother herself "was paralyzed decades ago when she was struck by a stray bullet."

Again, these are longstanding problems, but for the life of me we never hear the president speak out on such chronic violence afflicting the black community. It's going to be one of this administration's biggest moral failings.

At Chicago Tribune, "Slain teen's kidney donated to ailing grandmother."

Obama Sets Back Race Relations Decades

Awesome, as usual.

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "Obama’s Racial Crisis." (Via Pundette.)

PREVIOUSLY: "Frustrated Teacher Walks Off the Job in Los Angeles: Metaphor for Obama's Bankrupt Education Policy."

Pamela Geller on Sean Hannity's: Israel, the U.N. and War Against the Jews

I haven't had time to post, but Pamela's had a lot going on at Atlas Shrugs:

Obama Calls for $1.5 Trillion in New Taxes

On the "wealthy," of course.

At Washington Post, "Obama sharpens contrast with GOP, issues forceful call for new tax revenue."

President Obama made a defiant call on Monday for $1.5 trillion in new taxes as part of a plan to find $3.2 trillion in budget savings over the next decade, issuing his most detailed proposal yet to tame the soaring federal debt.

Abandoning earlier compromises, Obama adopted a posture that cedes far less ground in cutting the nation’s social safety net and demands much more in terms of new levies on millionaires, other wealthy Americans and some industries.

The proposal drew an angry response from key Republicans, underscoring the considerable opposition to his plan on Capitol Hill as a special bipartisan committee on deficit reduction ramps up its work in coming weeks.

Also at Chicago Sun-Times, "Tax the rich, Obama says; class warfare, says GOP."

Progressives are all energized about how Obama is supposedly throwing the "class warfare" attack back in the GOP's face. But all day I've been reading post after post from progressives just mercilessly demonizing the so-called corporate rich. Think Progress is seriously on the warpath, for example, "While Lobbying For Huge Tax Giveaways, Corporations Hoard Record Amounts of Cash Instead of Hiring," and "Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can’t Afford a Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K a Year After Feeding Family."

These are Marxist attacks, in essence. High earners or the wealthy don't deserve to keep their money. Repeatedly we hear Democrats speaking in terms of "shared sacrifice" and "fairness," but such appeals, nice sounding at first, are cancelled out by vicious attacks on those who aren't poor or unemployed. It's ridiculous. Indeed, it's un-American.

RELATED: "Anti-American Graffiti: Marxist Scribblings Sighted in Suburban Orange County."

Eleanor Mondale and Kara Kennedy, Both Daughters of Democratic Senators, Presidential Candidates, Both Dead at 51

I saw this earlier, "Eleanor Mondale, Daughter of Former Vice President, Dies at 51." I recall Eleanor back in the day. She was a striking blonde bombshell. And now here comes the news that Edward Kennedy's daughter Kara is also dead at the age of 51. See: "Kara Kennedy, daughter of Teddy, dies" (via Memeorandum):

BOSTON - Kara Kennedy Allen, the only daughter of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, has died.

A family friend confirmed to CBS Station WBZ that the 51-year-old Kennedy passed away, after reportedly suffering a heart attack Friday evening.

Walter Mondale was of course Jimmy Carter's vice-president. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1964 to 1976. He lost his presidential campaign against Ronald Reagan in 1984. Edward "Teddy" Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy's brother, served in the U.S. Senate from 1962 to 2009. He challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980.

New York-9 and the Democratic Coalition

I love this story, from Sean Trende, at RealClearPolitics (via Memeorandum).

It's a political science-y essay, with charts and graphs. And here's a clue: "Obama has had problems with working-class whites in particular."

After New York Race, G.O.P. Sees Ripple in Jewish Vote

Now get this, at New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Not since Jimmy Carter in 1980 has a Democrat running for president failed to win a lopsided majority of the Jewish vote. This has been true during times of peace or war, and even when there has been deep acrimony between the White House and the Israeli government.

Republicans see a chance to change that in 2012, with President Obama locked in a tense relationship with Israel’s leaders and criticized by many American Jews as being too tough on a close and favored ally. Tuesday’s Republican upset in New York’s Congressional election, they say, is a sign of bad things to come for Mr. Obama.

Sensing trouble, the Obama campaign and Democratic Party leaders have mobilized to solidify the president’s standing with Jewish voters. The Democratic National Committee has established a Jewish outreach program. The campaign is singling out Jewish groups, donors and other supporters with calls and e-mails to counter the Republican narrative that Mr. Obama is hostile to Israel.

More at the link.

And from the editors, who aren't please by developments, natch: "Israel and New York’s Ninth District."