“Just Get Out Of The Way”: Obama’s Electoral Mandate And Where It Leaves Republicans
Sunday’s morning shows featured some astoundingly stupid comments from Republicans who claim to believe that on Election Day voters gave them a “mandate” to continue their attempts to obstruct President Obama’s agenda.
Apparently some Republican pundits are still living in the same parallel universe that allowed them to convince themselves that by now, President-elect Mitt Romney would be organizing his transition.
It really is mind-boggling. Notwithstanding all of the available evidence, they still believe that the American people want them to stand in the way of increases in taxes for the wealthiest 2 percent and to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits for future retirees.
Who got a mandate for his policies on Election Day?
The presidential campaign focused like a laser on the question of whether tax rates should be increased for the top 2 percent of Americans or whether we should adopt Romney’s proposal to lower tax rates for the wealthy by another $5 trillion, and inevitably increase taxes on the middle class.
The campaign centered on the Ryan-Romney budget that would have slashed spending on critical services for the poor and middle class, reduce funding for education, do away with Medicare and replace it with a voucher program that would increase out-of-pocket costs for seniors by $6,500 per year.
And it was clear throughout, that the Republicans continued to favor privatizing Social Security.
- The Republican presidential ticket lost by 332 electoral votes to 206 electoral votes.
- Obama got 50.6 percent of the popular vote and Romney got 47.6 percent of the popular vote.
- Democrats took two additional seats in the Senate and now hold a 55-45 edge.
- The Senate Democratic caucus now includes more Progressive members and fewer Conservative members.
- Democrats picked up at least 7 and probably 8 seats in the House, and nationwide got over a half a million more votes for their House candidates than did the Republicans — even though the Republicans continued to control the chamber.
And the verdict that was rendered at the ballot box could be seen in virtually every national opinion survey.
The election was a battle over the future of the middle class, and Obama won that battle.
A Greenberg-Quinlan Research poll found that by 51 to 42 percent the voters said Obama would do a better job restoring the middle class.
They found that by almost two-thirds, voters believed Social Security and Medicare should not be cut as part of a deficit reduction deal.
A November 15, 2012 Hart Research poll for Americans for Tax Fairness found that:
- By a strong 17-point margin, voters favor ending the Bush tax cuts on incomes over250,000 (56 percent) rather than extending the tax cuts for all taxpayers (39 percent).
- President Obama now holds a commanding position in the debate over tax policy. When voters hear President Obama’s position on the Bush tax cuts — that he will sign a bill continuing them for 98 percent of Americans but will veto a bill continuing them for incomes over 250,000 — fully 61 percent agree with this stance. By contrast, when voters are read congressional Republicans’ position — that they will pass a bill continuing the cuts for all income levels, but will block any bill ending the cuts for those making over 250,000 — only 42 percent agree while a 53 percent majority rejects its plan.
NBCNews.com’s First Read, November 15, 2012 — more autopsy 2012— additional analysis of exit polls in battleground states:
- Support for raising taxes for 250K+ earners or everyone — Nevada 64 percent, Wisconsin 64 percent, Virginia 63 percent, Iowa 63 percent, New Hampshire 61 percent, Ohio 57 percent, Florida 57 percent — national average 60 percent.
Greenberg-Quinlan found in a November poll that Americans reject austerity in favor of investment that creates jobs. They were asked to choose between two statements:
We should avoid immediate drastic cuts in spending, and instead, we need serious investments that create jobs and make us more prosperous in the long-term that will reduce our debt, too.
Or…
The only way to restore prosperity and market confidence is to dramatically reduce government spending and our long-term deficits.
The statement favoring investments was chosen by 51 percent compared to 42 percent for the statement favoring cuts.
In fact, there is little question that voters understand better than many commentators and pundits that the budget battle in Washington is not mainly about ratios of revenue to cuts, or “reining in entitlements” — it is about who pays.
Will the wealthy, who have siphoned off all of the economic growth of the last 15 years, be asked to pay to fix the deficit that resulted from the Bush Tax cuts, and two unpaid-for wars? Or will the middle class — whose income has been stagnant or declining — be asked once again to foot the bill?
Voters get it. Time for D.C. pundits to get it as well.
Voters did send a mandate to Republicans on November 6th — a mandate to wake up and smell the coffee.
Here are a few of the mandates the voters gave Republicans:
- Bad idea to be viewed as a party who mainly represents the interests of the 1 percent and has candidates that were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
- Bad idea to insult almost half of the voters with comments about the 47 percent who can’t be convinced to “take responsibility for their lives.”
- Bad idea to insult the fastest growing ethnic group in America with your plans for “self deportation” and vetoing the Dream Act.
- Bad idea to patronize American women — who incidentally represent about 52 percent of the electorate — by telling them that government must intervene in the reproductive choices that should be left entirely to them and their doctors.
- Bad idea to believe you can any longer win national races in America by insulting and alienating people of color.
- Bad idea to ignore the persistent march of demographic changes that are transforming the American electorate. In addition to the growing proportion of people of color, the millennial generation — the most consistently progressive generation in recent American history — is becoming a larger portion of the overall electorate with every passing day.
Finally, the voters sent a loud and clear message that it is a bad idea for the GOP to continue to be the party that opposes traditional progressive American values.
They voted to confirm their view that they want a society where we have each others’ backs — where we’re all in this together, not all in this alone. They voted for a society where everyone does his or her fair share, gets a fair shake and plays by the same rules. They want a society that is hopeful and vibrant and celebrates its diversity — a society where it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or woman, gay or straight — a society where it doesn’t matter where you were born, or how much money your parents had when you grew up.
In short the voters showed once again that they want the kind of a society that Barack Obama described in his first major national speech — to the Democratic Convention in 2004 — a society where there are no blue states or red states — just the United States.
Now it’s time for the Republicans to lead, follow or get out of the way.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, November 19, 2012
“An Appeal To The GOP”: Don’t Listen To The Pundits, Stick To Your Principles
An appeal to Republicans: don’t listen to the pundits who say the lesson of 2012 is that you should change course to appeal to women and minorities in order to win elections. You should stick to your principles—and with the the old white men who provided tens of millions of votes on Election Day.
The country needs leaders who will speak from their hearts about “legitimate rape.” It’s true that 55 percent of women voted against Romney—but it’s wrong to say the Republicans don’t have women in their camp. You have that wrestling lady in Connecticut!
And it’s a lie that the white men who make up the base of the Republican party don’t like black people. Remember that your leading presidential candidate in the primaries at one point was Herman Cain.
It’s true that Latinos voted against the Republicans, 70-30 percent. But you’ve already moderated your policy where they are concerned: instead of calling for a police round-up of 10 million illegal immigrants, you favor the compassionate route: “self-deportation.” And as for those illegal kids who want to go to college under the so-called “Dream Act”—that’s just another case of the Democrats creating more people who are dependent on government (for their education).
Another thing: please keep up those attacks on Nate Silver. Yes, he did predict that the Democrats would win, but that is simply more evidence of his pro-Obama bias. He’s no more “scientific” than the people who say the climate is changing.
Twenty twelve was only one election—remember the last one, the midterms in 2010? Sticking to Republican principles there paid off handsomely. Please keep your focus on that year, not on 2012.
A choice, not an echo—that’s what America needs. Instead of becoming more “moderate,” you should be getting rid of the moderates in the Republican Party—like former Republican senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. It’s true that if he had run for re-election, he would have won with 65 percent of the vote, and the Republicans would have had a chance to gain control of the Senate. But it was more important for a Tea Party true believer to defeat him in the primary. That gave the Republicans a chance to run on the argument that conception resulting from rape is “something God intended to happen.”
The only problem with this advice to get rid of the moderate Republicans is that I don’t think there are any left. Mission accomplished!
By: Joe Wiener, The Nation, November 10, 2012
“The Heartland Election”: Ultimately Determined By “Makers” Quite Different From The Ones In Paul Ryan’s Speeches
When Mayor Bobby J. Hopewell talks about the importance of manufacturing to this friendly Michigan town with a name that lends itself to song, he doesn’t reel off the usual list of heavy industries typically associated with the word “factory.”
He speaks of Kalsec, the Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company founded in 1958 that produces and markets natural herbs and spices for food manufacturers. He mentions Fabri-Kal, a 62-year-old packaging company that describes itself as “the seventh-largest plastic thermoformer in North America.” Think of products in drug stores encased in heavy plastic. And he doesn’t leave out the pharmaceutical industry, long vital to his city’s economy.
Yes, we still make a lot of stuff in the United States of America, and one of the good things about this election is that it is likely to be decided in the nation’s industrial heartland — in the towns and cities of Ohio above all, but also in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
President Obama almost certainly needs these states to win reelection, and if he does, manufacturing is destined for a larger role in the American economic conversation. Many promises have been made this year to the people and the communities whose ability to thrive has long depended upon manufacturing. The campaign’s thrust should move them to the heart of our efforts to seek a path up from the financial catastrophe that engulfed the country in 2008.
For two decades now, we have acted as if nearly all of us are destined to work in the tech industry or health care — or to survive on money that trickles our way courtesy of the world of finance. But while Hopewell is proud of the part played in his city by universities and those engaged in work involving what he calls “intellectual property,” he adds: “We are major makers in the region.”
When Hopewell is asked if he used the term “makers” in the way Paul Ryan does in drawing a distinction between “makers” and “takers” — between those who produce and those who get government aid — this Democrat laughs heartily. No, he says, his views have little in common with Ryan’s. The mayor is talking about manufacturing, pure and simple.
Leaders of traditional factory towns are by no means interested in a stagnant world in which members of each generation follows their parents into the same old factory job. On the contrary, this city is proud of “The Kalamazoo Promise,” the remarkable initiative of anonymous local donors who have established a fund that pays for a college education for every graduate of the city’s schools.
In Parma, Ohio, the industrial suburb of Cleveland where both Bruce Springsteen and Bill Clinton recently campaigned on Obama’s behalf, Mayor Tim DeGeeter said the top priority of the city’s blue-collar workers is a college education for their children. Parma and places like it, he adds, also want the sort of economic development that creates higher-end jobs so graduates can stay in the area, “and not have to move to Phoenix or Charlotte.”
What both mayors are saying (there are many like them) is that they want the market system to work for their communities, but do not want to leave their citizens utterly at the mercy of decisions made by economic actors far away, or of economic forces that no one controls.
This is why the rescue of the auto industry has been such a defining campaign issue in the Midwest. In Parma, DeGeeter notes that the auto revival means that GM recently made a $20 million investment in its stamping plant in the city. “That helps me sleep at night,” he says.
Hopewell says that even though the auto industry is not as important to Kalamazoo as it is in the Detroit area, “you can’t be a Michigander and not understand the importance of the auto industry, and not understand what it has done for our state.” The Republican sweep in Michigan in 2010 suggested it might be open to the GOP’s presidential candidate this year. But so far, it has remained anchored in Obama’s camp.
More broadly, white voters without college educations are voting for Obama at nearly twice the rate in the Midwest as in the South. In the Midwest, Obama is drawing 41 percent of their votes, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll, compared with only 24 percent in the South. If Obama prevails, “makers” of a sort quite different from the ones in Ryan’s speeches will have played a central role.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 28, 2012
“Moderate Mitt” Isn’t Back”: He Suddenly Talks Like One But Is Only Embracing The Rhetorical Strategy Of George W. Bush
The news overnight was that Mitt Romney had decided to do a mea culpa for the secretly recorded “47 percent” remarks that rocked his campaign a few weeks ago, calling them “just completely wrong” in an interview with Sean Hannity.
This came 24 hours after a debate in which Romney labored to present himself as more of a pragmatist than an ideologue, objecting insistently when President Obama tried to link him to conservative economic ideas that would threaten the safety net. And it came a little over a week after Romney invoked his own Massachusetts healthcare law – a law that served as the blueprint for Obamacare and that Romney ignored as much as possible during the Republican primaries — as proof of his commitment to aiding poor and middle-class Americans.
These developments are leading the press to declare that Romney is moving to the center – and some pundits to celebrate the supposed return of Mitt the Massachusetts Moderate. But this is a complete misreading of what Romney’s actually up to.
Yes, it’s true, he’s been striking a more moderate tone of late. And for good reason. In the Obama era, the Republican Party has moved far to the right, reflexively opposing every major Obama initiative (even those grounded in traditionally Republican principles) and imposing stringent purity tests on its own candidates. The result is that the GOP never bothered these past four years to formulate a coherent and marketable policy blueprint. To the masses, the GOP’s main selling point has been – and continues to be – this simple message: We’re not Obama. To the extent the party has spelled out affirmative policy ideas, it’s mainly created headaches for Republican candidates running in competitive general election contests.
Romney has long been aware that he can’t actually run on the ideas that his party has generated these past few years, but he’s been further constrained by the right’s deep suspicion of his own ideological credentials. Thus, Romney has spent most of the general election campaign awkwardly switching between vague, broad-stroke pronouncements aimed at swing voters and gestures that mesh with the radicalized, Obama-phobic spirit of today’s GOP base.
What’s changed in the last week or so is the balance: Romney is now primarily pitching his message at non-GOP base voters – people who are likely to recoil at the implications of the policy ideas that the national Republican Party has embraced – and skipping the red meat.
His debate exchange with Obama over taxes is a perfect example. Romney is clearly vulnerable on the issue; the plan he’s presented would slash tax rates in a way that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, and would either explode the deficit or require the elimination of popular, widely used tax deductions. This reflects the actual priorities of the Republican Party, but it’s also at odds with what most Americans (who consistently tell pollsters they don’t like deficits and want taxes on the wealthy raised, and who are fond of their tax deductions) want. Romney’s solution: Insist during the debate that the rich won’t get a tax break and that the deficit won’t explode and avoid specifying any deductions that might be on the chopping block. Given his strong delivery (and Obama’s inability to force him off his script), Romney probably succeeded in sounding reasonable and moderate to most casual viewers.
He played the same game on other sensitive subjects that came up during the debate, like healthcare and education, and his decision to repudiate his own “47 percent” remarks – something he refused to do when the tape was first released a few weeks ago – marks another step toward the rhetorical middle.
Comparisons between Romney now and George W. Bush in 2000 are becoming popular, since Bush employed the same basic strategy in his campaign that Romney used in the debate. There’s an important difference, though: Bush’s platform actually included some nods to moderation. With Romney, it’s only his words.
For instance, Bush called for an expanded federal role in education, which translated into No Child Left Behind, and for federal action to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors, which led to the creation of Medicare Part D during his presidency. You can certainly take issue with how these laws were crafted and implemented, but Bush’s willingness to pursue them at all represented a break from conservative dogma.
But Romney’s actual platform contains no moderate planks. For instance, he tried to assuage middle-of-the-road voters on healthcare by insisting during the debate that he would repeal Obamacare without sacrificing its popular features, like a ban on the denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions. “No. 1,” Romney said, “preexisting conditions are covered under my plan.” It’s essential for any candidate trying to appeal to general election swing voters to say this, but the actual policy Romney has proposed would not have the effect he described.
Education is another example, with Romney asserting that, “I love great schools. And the key to great schools, great teachers. So I reject the idea that I don’t believe in great teachers or more teachers.” Again, this is tonally in line with what middle-of-the-road voters want to hear, but where is the policy to back it up? As president, Obama presided over a stimulus program that saved hundreds of thousands of teachers’ jobs, and he proposed further action through the American Jobs Act last fall. Romney has railed against both of those programs and not offered any blueprint for hiring more teachers.
This is probably why conservative opinion-leaders seem so unbothered by Romney’s shift to the middle. They recognize that it makes him sound more agreeable to swing voters and that it could help in how he’s portrayed through the media. And they also realize that no matter how much he talks like one, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that a President Romney would govern like a moderate.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, October 5, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 