“Unfinished Business”: President’s Obama’s Victory Should Settle A Bitter Argument
President Obama’s reelection was at once a deeply personal triumph and a victory for the younger, highly diverse and broadly progressive America that rallied to him. It was a result that ought to settle the bitter argument that ground the nation’s government to a near-standstill.
The president spent much of the year fighting the effects of a stubbornly sluggish economic recovery and facing implacable opposition among Republicans in Congress who made defeating him a high priority. He fought back by undermining Mitt Romney’s major asset as a private-equity specialist and by enlisting Bill Clinton as his chief explainer.
And he mobilized a mighty army of African American and Hispanic voters. They were all the more determined to exercise their voting rights after Republicans sought in state after state to make it harder for them to cast ballots. Latino voters turned out overwhelmingly for the president, guaranteeing that immigration reform will be on the next Congress’s agenda.
Just as important for governance over the next four years, the president took on an increasingly militant conservatism intent on vastly reducing the responsibilities of government and cutting taxes even more on the wealthiest Americans. In the process, he built a broad alliance of moderates and progressives who still believe in government’s essential role in regulating the marketplace and broadening the reach of opportunity.
Many have argued that the president ran a “small” and “negative” campaign, and he was certainly not shy about going after Romney. But this misses the extent to which Obama made specific commitments and repeatedly cast the election as a choice between two different philosophical directions.
He was not vague about what he meant. Obama campaigned explicitly on higher taxes for the wealthy as part of a balanced budget deal. He stoutly defended the federal government’s interventions to bring the economy back from the brink — and especially his rescue of the auto companies.
It cannot be forgotten that saving General Motors and Chrysler was the most “interventionist” and “intrusive” economic policy Obama pursued — and it proved to be the most electorally successful of all of his decisions. The auto bailout was key to Obama’s crucial victory in Ohio, where six in 10 voters approved the rescue. Union households in the state voted strongly for the president, and he held his own among working-class whites.
The president also called for higher levels of government spending for job training and education, particularly community colleges. And he spoke repeatedly against turning Medicare into a voucher program and sending Medicaid to the states.
The voters who reelected the president knew what they were voting for. They also knew what they were voting against. Romney paid a high price for his comments suggesting that “47 percent” of the electorate was hopelessly dependent on government. Writing off nearly half the potential voters is never a good idea. On Tuesday, a clear majority rejected that notion. It rejected as well Rep. Paul Ryan’s categorization of the country as made up of “makers” and “takers.”
Romney tried hard to scramble toward the political middle in the campaign’s final month, and that too should send a signal: In this election, the hard-line ideas of the tea party were rejected not only by those who voted against the Republicans but also by Republicans themselves. And Republicans will be well aware that tea party candidates, notably in Indiana and Missouri, sharply set back their efforts to take control of the Senate.
Republicans will take solace in their success in holding on to the House of Representatives. But the party as a whole will have to come to terms with its failures to expand beyond its base of older white voters and to translate right-wing slogans into a coherent agenda. Republicans need to have a serious talk with themselves, and they need to change.
All of this strengthens Obama’s hand. It will not be so easy for Republicans to keep saying no. They can no longer use their desire to defeat Obama as a rallying cry. They cannot credibly insist that tax increases can never be part of a solution to the nation’s fiscal problems.
And now Obama will have the strongest argument a politician can offer. Repeatedly, he asked the voters to settle Washington’s squabbles in his favor. On Tuesday, they did. And so a president who took office four years ago on a wave of emotion may now have behind him something more valuable and durable: a majority that thought hard about his stewardship and decided to let him finish the job he had begun.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 7, 2012
“Make A Difference For President Obama”: No Matter Where You Live, Voting Really Matters This Time
Lately I’ve traveled with Bill Clinton as he barnstorms the country to elect Democrats — especially including President Obama. On Sunday night, the former president and the man he is trying to re-elect together addressed the largest crowd ever recorded in New Hampshire’s political history when they drew 14,000 people to a rally in Concord.
On Monday, I watched Clinton speak before thousands of energized, cheering voters at rallies in Pennsylvania, where the presidential race seemed to grow tighter in the final hours before Election Day. He landed first in Pittsburgh, flew to Montgomery County, then drove down to Philadelphia and ended the day in Scranton – always with the same message:
“I want you to go out tomorrow and make Barack Obama president for four more years!”
Unlike some of the president’s more reluctant supporters — who affect a fashionable disenchantment with the bruised champion of “hope and change” – Clinton says he feels far more enthusiastic this year than in 2008. That difference might reflect the years elapsed since Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in a tough primary battle, although Clinton certainly worked hard to elect him in the general election last time.
Whatever he felt four years ago, Bill Clinton can readily articulate why Obama earned his fervent backing this year – and why he finds Mitt Romney utterly unacceptable. (See his detailed essay rebutting the Des Moines Register’s Romney endorsement.) In Pennsylvania, he repeatedly mocked Romney for refusing to say whether he would sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. “It’s a simple yes or no answer,” chortled Clinton. “But he says, ‘I had a binder full of women.’” Laughter, catcalls, and applause exploded from the audience.
Clinton scolded Romney for advertising lies about Jeep moving American jobs to China that were so blatant they evoked protests from the presidents of General Motors and Chrysler. “You don’t have to be from Ohio to want a president who tells you the truth when it comes to jobs for the future,” he roared.
For two months, Clinton has jetted across the swing states from Florida, Virginia, and Ohio to Nevada and Colorado, talking himself hoarse. During the campaign’s closing hours, however, he recorded dozens of robocall messages to voters in the non-swing states, specifically in New York and New Jersey — promoting Democratic Senate and Congressional candidates, and simply encouraging voters in the storm-wracked Northeast to find a way to cast their ballots.
In what pollsters predict will be such a close contest, Clinton’s message is not just another civics lecture, but terribly urgent. Whether you live in a blue state, a red state, or a purple state, it is vital for you to vote in this election. The reason is simple. Although President Obama appears likely to win enough electoral votes for a Constitutional victory, he could quite conceivably receive fewer popular votes than Romney. That prospect is more likely now because Superstorm Sandy has badly damaged voting sites and processes in New York and New Jersey, where the president may be deprived of hundreds of thousands of votes as a consequence.
If President Obama wins the electoral vote but loses the popular vote, nobody should expect the Republicans to behave as magnanimously as Al Gore and the Democrats did in 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote but was awarded the electoral vote — and the presidency — by a partisan, truth-twisting Supreme Court majority of one.
There is a danger, in fact, that a popular vote margin for Romney, no matter how small, might embolden a Republican governor in a state where Obama had won — perhaps Ohio or Florida — to instruct his Republican-dominated legislature to choose electors committed to Romney rather than the president. The right has rarely hesitated to violate Constitutional and democratic principles for the sake of power. Indeed, the Ohio secretary of state — like Republican officials across the country – has already sought to deprive citizens of that state of their voting rights.
So wherever you live, do not fail to vote. Make sure that your family and friends and neighbors vote. The focus on swing states is understandable, but it is only half the story of this election. Every ballot cast, in every state, is certain to make a difference this time.
By: Joe Conason, The National Review, November 6, 2012
“Why Should You Vote?”: Visualize Romney World And Move America Forward
My wife, Jan Schakowsky, and I are friends with a wonderful woman named Bea. Bea is now 95 years old. Bea was born in 1917.
She was born in a country where women couldn’t vote. In some areas of the country, just fifty years before, slavery had been legal. Collective bargaining was not recognized under the law. Poverty was rampant — especially among the country’s oldest citizens.
Bea was born in a country where there was an unimaginable gulf between a few fabulously wealthy oligarchs, and the masses of ordinary people. It was a country where only a tiny fraction of the population ever went to college — or even graduated from high school — a country were hardly anyone was considered “middle class.” It was a country where there were few regulations to protect health and safety on the job, no national child labor laws, no federal minimum wage, and very little to prevent corporations from recklessly destroying the environment.
Bea was born in a country where people of color were considered second-class citizens and discrimination against them was enshrined into law — a country where gays and homosexuals could be prosecuted for their sexual orientation.
Bea was born in the United States of America.
Over her lifetime, Bea has been involved in many of the great social movements of our time — movements that helped transform our country into the envy of the world.
She was active building the labor unions that build the middle class. won a living wage, weekends and a 40-hour work week, pensions for retirement, and the passage of Social Security and Medicare that ensured a retirement free of poverty.
She marched with the civil rights movement that gave people of color an equal status in American society.
Bea became a public school teacher and helped educate an ever-expanding number of ordinary Americans — watching more and more of them go on to college to fulfill their dreams.
She was part of the women’s movement that demanded equal status and equal pay for women — as well as the right for women to control their own decisions about contraception and abortion.
This year, Bea — at 95 years old — is working on a phone bank to turn out voters for Barack Obama. She says that if Mitt Romney and the Republican Right win the election on Tuesday, they have made clear that they absolutely intend to destroy all of the things for which she has struggled her entire life. She’s right.
Mitt Romney has demonstrated over the years that he has only one real core value: his own success.
Throughout his career, Mitt has demonstrated that he will do whatever is necessary to benefit himself — and his investors. At Bain Capital he didn’t flinch when it came to destroying other people’s jobs and lives if it would make him and his investors money.
Now his “investors” are the oligarchs of the Republican Right — people like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson — who, between them, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get him elected. Many are the same people who funded the Tea Party movement. Others are the Wall Street hedge fund barons whose recklessness collapsed the economy and came very close to recreating a Great Depression.
These people — and their Tea Party allies in Congress — have shown the country that they have no intention of compromise. They are intent upon rolling back all of the things Bea has fought for — on sending us back to the Gilded Age. They truly believe that America would be a better place without labor unions. They want to eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers of ever-shrinking value that pay private insurance companies.
They want to be free to despoil the environment, do away with public education, eliminate jobs, cut wages, and continue to appropriate every dime of economic growth that is generated by our increasingly productive labor force.
As President Obama said in the second presidential debate, they want send us back to the foreign policy of the 1980’s, a social policy of the 1950’s and an economic policy of the 1920’s. They believe in a society where the law of the jungle reigns supreme — where you look out for yourself above all else — where, if you believe you are your brother and sisters’ keeper, that we shouldn’t leave anyone behind, that we should have each other’s back — you’re simply a chump.
If Mitt Romney becomes president, Republicans keep control of the House and win the few seats necessary to control the Senate, there will be nothing to restrain them from making their vision of society a reality in America — from taking America backward to a time most of us cannot imagine.
What are some of the things a President Romney has promised to do?
- Eliminate Medicare and convert it into a voucher for private insurance — ending the most popular and successful health care program in American history and raising out of pocket costs for seniors by6,500 a year.
- Privatize and cut Social Security – handing over the Social Security Trust fund to Wall Street and eliminating guaranteed benefits.
- Appoint — most likely two — Supreme Court justices who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, outlawing abortion rights — and most likely make the Court a firm ally of unrestrained corporate and Wall Street power for generations.
- Repeal Wall Street Reform. Return us to the pre-crash law that would allow Wall Street to once again run wild, gamble with more and more exotic financial instruments, make a fortune for itself — and once again wreck the economy.
- Repeal ObamaCare. That by itself would end the promise that no one will ever again be bankrupt by a sudden illness. It will return us to a very recent time when someone who has a pre-existing condition can be denied insurance coverage – and that insurance companies can call the shots when it comes to your health care.
- Pass the Ryan Budget. That would mean slashing critical federal expenditures that benefit the middle class and those who aspire to the middle class, like cutting Medicaid that pays for health care for the poor, children and those in need of nursing homes or home care — and slashing funds for education and college grants.
- Increase military spending by two trillion dollars above the amount requested by the military leadership. That might benefit big defense contractors, but it would make it practically impossible to reduce the giant federal deficit.
- Give the wealthy an additional 5 trillion dollar tax cut and pay for it by increasing the effective tax rate paid by the middle class.
- Stop funding for Planned Parenthood and any other family planning programs that we fund around the world that use their own funds to pay for abortions.
- Try to pass the “Personhood” Amendment that would effectively outlaw all abortions and many forms of hormonal contraception.
- Allow many of the same Neo-Con foreign policy advisers who got us into the Iraq War to once again take control of American foreign policy.
- Veto the Dream Act that would allow young people who were brought to America as children to apply for citizenship.
- Eliminate the Presidential Directive that prevents the deportation of Dream Act-eligible young people.
- Empower people like Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who wrote the Arizona “papers please” law and now serves as Romney’s chief adviser on immigration.
- Slash environmental regulations and investment in clean energy development.
The list goes on and on.
But worse than the individual initiatives that Romney and Ryan have made clear they would undertake, is the attitude they would bring to decision-making.
Romney’s true views were laid bare in the now famous “47 percent video” where he explained how he could not convince 47% of Americans to take responsibility for their lives — people like retirees who worked all of their lives for their Social Security and Medicare — people like veterans who risked their lives for the country — people like the disabled — in fact, pretty much anyone who doesn’t agree with his “we’re all in this alone” view of American society.
If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are elected on Tuesday, they will turn back the clock on progress in America. If they are allowed to do so by a Republican House and Senate, they would return us to a time we could scarcely imagine.
For those who believe in a society where we’re all in this together, Tuesday’s election is the mother of all battles.
But if we all vote, we will win — it’s that simple. If you care about the future society we leave to our children; if you believe that we can once again have an expanding, robust middle class; if you believe that the American Dream is not dead and that our children should be able to look forward to more opportunity than was available to their moms and dads — there is no excuse not to vote.
We simply cannot allow the millions of right wing special interest money to buy America’s democracy.
Where you can, vote early. Regardless, get to the polls. If you need to stand in line, stay there until you vote. Everyone who is in line will have a chance to vote, even if the lines are long.
However it turns out, Tuesday will mark a decisive, historic turning point in American history. Together, if we all vote, we have the power to continue America’s progressive tradition. We have the power to move America forward, not back. We have the power to assure that at this decisive moment we once again bend the arc of history toward justice.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, November 4, 2012
“Controlling The Access To Vote”: Volunteers For Voter Suppression Group Installed As Election Officials In Ohio
Conservative poll observers are gearing up for Election Day, when they will watch for possible instances of voter fraud and challenge voters they find suspicious. As ThinkProgress reported, many of these volunteers have been fed false or misleading information about voting rights by the Romney campaign and independent Tea Party groups like True the Vote. True the Vote encouragesits poll watchers to “build relationships with election administrators” because “they control the access to the vote.”
But one True the Vote affiliate, the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, is taking their election interference one step further. Ohio VIP has recruited and dispatched poll workers who will not be merely observing, but directly involved in the voting process in a crucial swing state. Hamilton County elections director Tim Burke told the Columbus Dispatch that VIP poll workers will represent the Republican Party:
We know that the Voter Integrity Project has recruited and through the (Hamilton) County Republican Party has placed some poll workers. I have discussed this with my Republican counterpart.
I accept the fact that he understands that the VIP pollworkers are working for the Board of Elections on Election Day and are subject to the board’s instructions, not the VIP instruction. Obviously both sides are going to have observers as well as poll workers. I, and others will spend the day responding to trouble calls.
Ohio VIP provides a 3 hour training for their poll workers, as required by the Board of Elections. The group is advertising these sessions, according to the Dispatch, “as going beyond what the secretary of state tells them.” Ohio VIP is one of the more zealous branches of the already extreme True the Vote national organization; Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) opened a criminal investigation into True the Vote due to the Ohio group’s attempts to purge thousands of students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans from the voting rolls.
While in-person voter fraud is exceedingly rare, overzealous poll workers could jeopardize legitimate votes by forcing them to use provisional ballots, which cannot be counted until November 17. Ohio’s provisional ballot mess is already threatening to disenfranchise thousands of legitimate voters — the bulk of whom live in urban, minority-heavy areas like Hamilton County, which contains Cincinnati. In 2004, Ohio tossed out thousands of provisional ballots, concentrated in Hamilton and the state’s four other urban counties. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) lost Ohio by a narrow margin in 2004, allowing George W. Bush to win a second term.
By: Aviva Shen, Think Progress, November 2, 2012
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