If we continue to judge these guys on every single word and phrase that comes out of their mouths between now and November, we'll all go stir crazy.

to gain any advantage they thing will garner a voting margin that helps them win somewhere(and this will really piss PW off that we could be thinking the same thing and agreeing--maybe  not .  Those are interesting possibilities, but I just think Team Romney by reflex and Team Obama with 100 days to go are looking for every little scintilla or idea to make their candidate shine, or to criticize the other one and to target any sliver of possible voters they can pick up with any comment/tweet/speech/press release they can make for their guy or against the other one.

It's the nature of all political campaigns with high stakes, but particularly now with the 24 hr. news cycle, and Twitter and the rest of the social media apps.  And if they can gain what they think is a vote-getting edge by leaving off sentences that completely do plastic surgery on the context of the statement as I have seen Fox do, then so much the better. The faithful base will love it, tweet it, and worship it on their web sites, and it will be accepted.  And a good deal of this from either side might well come from the Super-Pacs who are going to be the bad cop or the worst cop in the barrage of negative campaigning that's dominating from both parties.

For example (by them) that "UnAmerican, Muslim infiltrating Barry Obama has let his hatred for America out of the bag."  Both sides are intensely if not viciously trying to portray the other guy as "not one of us", foreign  to us, "out of synch with American values, or outright destructive to American values. Again honestly, it seems that Romney's campaign has been more aggressive in trying to portray Obama as anti-American  WITH INTENT (excuse the caps please) but some of the commercials and comments not so much by Romney himself, but by surrogates are going after Obama as (the wildest extreme) a secret Muslim with destructive intent infiltrating the highest office in America.

I think if you take a very close look at Obama's major years as a kid, in American schools when he was most impressionable, that's a hard sell to make--almost an impossible sell.  And if Obama were what he is painted by the wildest extremes, it seems to me he would not be raising his kids as mainstream Americans or privately that the Obamas would have what looks to me like a fairly typical American social life.  Anyone is free to disagree with me and they will, but I think it's beyond the pale to suggest Obama is anti-American--quite the opposite seems obvious to me.

I think that Romney's team just wanted to say Mitt helped out with SLOC and he did a great job, and our guy Mitt can come in an organize anything well whether it's the Olympics, the US economy, making China stand on it's head and whistle the Star Spangled Banner, while saluting the American flag or whatever. And now that we're about 100 days away from election day,  the media, particularly, has to fill the Fox shows and/or the MSNBC shows that are cable 24X7, and the CNN shows (a channel I think has lost it's luster and precision a long time ago) so they're going to microanalyze every single burp that comes from either campaign camp.

And again I agree entirely with Pitching Wedge and his message that

"If we continue to judge these guys on every single word and phrase that comes out of their mouths between now and November, we'll all go stir crazy."

I would just modify that.  I think all of us already have.  I'm working on my computer at night a lot more with the sound off unless I want to watch some hour long drama that has nothing to do with politics.  I mean how many times can MSNBC show the same thing on each and every show and Fox probably does that but honestly, I don't watch Fox.  It's as if whatever is perceived as the latest gaffe of the hour, not just the day, has to be attacked by every dog on the cable channel with each hour's show and it does get old. Very old. I especially like Chris Hayes who writes for The Nation which is liberal, who is on early Sat/Sun mornings.  To me he has the smartest discussions, and really tries to be pretty objective in those discussions and brings on people who aren't partisan hacks despite the fact he's married to one of the hundreds of Obama attorneys in the WH.

What Worries Me the Most that Can Cause Obama to Lose A Close Election

What worries me the most is, and of course their won't be agreement on this here is that the restrictive voter laws  in states like Pennsylvania, S. Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Georgia that are now being litigated by DOJ and ACLU against the states in federal district courts, are going to cut a lot of Democratic voters out who won't be allowed to vote.    I mean by a lot an election determining number of voters in the millions who would vote but now won't find the way to get the credentials they need to vote.  It's estimated that over a million Pennsylvania voters may not be able to vote becauase they can't get (not that they are not able to qualify) a a federal or state issued picture ID (including a Passport and also a Birth Certificate. The GOP governor of Pa. who signed the bill can't even tick off what is needed in order to vote. That's pretty hypocritical, disingenous,  and pathetic.  If I signed a bill, I could tell you what's in it that qualifies people to vote and so could you.

The law  has gone on trial in Federal court this week.  According to the article I'm going to link here:

" data reportedly shows that between 60 and 65 percent of eligible voters, and a similar percentage of people who actually voted in 2008, don't have the right ID because their drivers' licenses have expired."

That's as significant as it gets if those figures are accurate.  From an article in Long Island Newsday on the trial:

Bazelon: Voter ID law in Pennsylvania could backfire on GOP

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/bazelon-voter-id-law-in-pennsylvania-could-backfire-on-gop-1.3863388







It's not as easy for them for some of this population as Newt Gingridge's former campaign manager Rick Tyler tried to argue yesterday when he hit a bunch of shows.  They don't just hop in a car and go get whatever piece of paper they need. And in my state because of the Federal requirements for a DL renewal to have a birth certificate as one of the 3 components, the lines are now taking 5 hours and the clusterfuck is causing some people just to turn around and say fuck it--they'll take their chances or come back another day if they can.  

No one wants to wait much longer than a half hour to renew a driver's license. Once they do this, they can do it forever (they say) on line, but that's just one more hurdle for younger kids are very  elderly people who don't do well standing in line for long periods of time in a hot poorly air conditioned state office building.

My state is voting on July 31 on a bunch of things including a several billion dollar transportation program. financed by an additional penny sales tax.  It's going to lose 70-30 I predict,  for a variety of reasons ,unfortunately but one of them is that the GOP made sure the vote got moved from November when I hear there are elections for big offices, to July the effing 31. In my state the turnout is between 10-15% of the population for off prime time voting. And July 31 is sure as hell off prime time voting. That's precisely why the GOP dominated legislature moved it there.

Early voting for November got seriously shortened for no  other reason then the calculation was if less people vote early, less people vote democratic.  The rationale goes that poorer people and a population with more single moms and people with more than one job who might not be able to get off, just won't show up, and that's more GOP votes down the ticket.





-- Modified on 7/26/2012 10:55:15 PM